METROPOLITAN EDISON COMPANY - Pennsylvania Public Utility ...

All three FE-PA Companies have had circuits that have shown up on the 5%worst performing circuits list consistently. As evident from Exhibit VI-7, five circuits havebeen on the 5% worst performing circuits list for 14 consecutive quarters or three and ahalf years. The primary causes of these outages have been attributed to vehicleaccidents, line failures, non-preventable trees and equipment failures. For the mostpart, remedial work is performed on these circuits immediately to include fieldengineering reviews.The FE-PA Companies indicated that most of the circuits that show up on the 5%worst performing circuits list on a consistent basis have a lot of wire and are very ruraland not easily accessible which makes it difficult and takes longer to get to them.Moreover, some of these circuits don’t have a lot of ties with other neighboring circuitsmaking it difficult to restore outages in a short period of time leading to high customerminutes of interruption.Sectionalizing of a distribution system can have a significant impact on continuityof service and overall system reliability. Proper sectionalizing minimizes the number ofcustomers affected by service interruption reducing SAIFI and SAIDI. Radio controlledsectionalizing would modify the topology of the system especially the rural areas thatare not easily accessible. The lines can be energized through different paths throughinterconnections with other feeders and/or interconnection of lines belonging to thesame feeder.The Audit Staff understands that most of these circuits are rural and not easilyaccessible which is why we suggest that the Company consider installing radiocontrolled sectionalizing at some of these locations or some other devices to improvereliability. Reportedly the FE-PA Companies have looked into radio controlledsectionalizing but didn’t think that they would get the biggest “bang for the buck” (i.e.,the costs to install the devices would be much higher than the benefits derived such asa reduction in SAIDI). The Audit Staff is not suggesting that the FE-PA Companiesimmediately install radio controlled sectionalizing, but we believe that performing a costbenefit analysis for radio controlled or similar sectionalizing devices for prospectiveareas would be a step in the right direction.Staff’s Follow-up Recommendation – Take additional actions on circuits that stayon the 5% worst performing circuit for more than a year and develop solutions toimprove overall reliability on these circuits.Prior Recommendation – Conduct a more useful planning study.Prior Situation – In accordance with the 2004 Reliability Settlement Agreement,FirstEnergy conducted a line and substation workforce study pertaining to the FE-PACompanies. The study was a staffing analysis which examined each of the FE-PACompanies’ staffing levels and how they were expected to be affected by retirementand non-retirement attrition. The workload forecast was based on historical timesheetdata as well as contractor usage for the year 2004.- 43 -