PG&E Delivered Second Best Reliability in History in 2016, Despite Challenging Weather
March 14 2017 - 5:00PM
Business Wire
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) delivered excellent
electric reliability in 2016 with the average customer experiencing
one outage during the year. PG&E’s sizable investment in its
electric infrastructure and its robust commitment to integrating
innovative technology continues to pay dividends for its
customers.
In 2016, the average duration of power outages for a PG&E
customer was 109 minutes. That was up slightly from 96 minutes in
2015, but still represented the second-lowest total in history and
reflects a 35 percent improvement over the past decade. The slight
decline in year-over-year reliability can mostly be attributed to
stormy El Nino weather early in the year.
“It’s our job to provide safe and reliable power to our
customers, and I’m proud to say that that is exactly what the men
and women of PG&E delivered in 2016. The hard work of our
employees coupled with the investments we continue to make to
create a smarter, more reliable grid benefit all of us,” said Pat
Hogan, senior vice president, PG&E Electric Operations.
What’s behind the solid electric reliability performance in
2016? The integration of advanced communications and control
technologies throughout the electric grid continues to enhance the
resiliency of the system and helps identify and restore power
outages more quickly. In the last five years, PG&E has invested
$15 billion to enhance and harden its electric transmission and
distribution system assets. A wide range of factors, from the
operation of new distribution control centers to the building of a
smarter energy infrastructure to advances in forecasting and
emergency planning, all contributed to reliability progress.
New Distribution Control Centers
Since 2014, PG&E has opened three state-of-the-art electric
distribution control centers that manage more than 140,000 miles of
electric distribution power lines throughout Northern and Central
California. The third of these – in Rocklin in Placer County –
opened in 2016. These facilities are the nerve centers of the grid
that delivers energy to the homes and businesses of more than 16
million Californians. The Rocklin, Fresno and Concord centers have
enhanced electric reliability for PG&E customers while
incorporating clean, renewable energy into the grid.
Smart Grid
PG&E continues to install advanced automated technology on
power lines throughout its service area. This technology can
automatically “self-heal” the grid by re-routing the flow of
electricity around a damaged power line and effectively restore
power to the majority of impacted customers within minutes. These
systems have been installed on more than 25 percent of PG&E’s
electrical distribution circuits, helping the company avoid more
than 160 million customer outage minutes and saving more than 1.6
million customers from a sustained outage since the program began
in 2012. Other advances, such as line sensors that help pinpoint
the specific location of an outage, continue to be integrated into
the system.
Advance Forecasting
PG&E’s meteorology team has developed a Storm Outage
Prediction Model (SOPP) that incorporates real-time weather
forecasts, historic data and system knowledge to accurately show
where and when storm impacts will be most severe. This model
enables the company to pre-stage crews and equipment as storms
approach to enable rapid response to outages.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com/ and
www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
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Pacific Gas and Electric CompanyMatt Nauman, 415-973-5930
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