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Posted On: 12/13/2006

Survey says service reliability is top power industry concern

PlantServices.com

Service reliability ranks as the top concern of power industry respondents to the First Annual Strategic Decisions in the Utility Industry Survey taken during the recent Edison Electric Institute’s 41st Annual Financial Conference, Las Vegas.

The survey, completed in late August by Black & Veatch, identified that investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and municipal utilities rank the reliability of electric service and the aging workforce as two of their top three concerns.

• IOUs view service reliability as the No. 1 issue; electric infrastructure
  as No. 2, and the aging workforce as No. 3.
• Municipals view aging workforce as their No. 1 concern, reliability as No. 2, and aging infrastructure as No. 5.

The survey also revealed that 47% of the IOU respondents regard their power generation operations as being “near the end,” “at the end,” “past” or “well past” their planned service lives. Some 44% identified their transmission operations as being in the same condition, while 51% also stated their electric distribution operations were in this range.

Other challenges analyzed in the survey include environmental issues, fuel policy concerns, long-term investment, market structure, regulation, security risks, business continuity concerns and the implementation of new technology. In addition to providing their ranking of the key challenges, respondents also assessed the time and the expected costs for achieving goals to meet individual items listed in the survey.

Complete survey results are available at www.bv.com/consult.