The Need for Consumer-Centric Reliability Metrics

Electric reliability matters to everyone. From the short duration outages that interrupt our daily lives to the high costs of restarting production lines at industrial plants, power outages come with significant impacts. We live in a world where expectations for reliable electricity are rising. As more devices become digitally connected and electrified, and more distributed power services appear on the grid, a person’s dependence on reliable power is increasing. Despite the changes in use and expectation, the most commonly used metrics for measuring grid reliability have remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s. This results in the poor measurement of customers’ real-life experiences with their electric reliability.