Pennsylvania Code › Title 52 - PUBLIC UTILITIES › Part I - Public Utility Commission › Subpart C - Fixed Service Utilities › Chapter 57 - ELECTRIC SERVICE › Subchapter N - ELECTRIC RELIABILITY STANDARDS › Section 57.194 - Distribution system reliability

Current through Register Vol. 54, No. 28, July 13, 2024
(a)
					 An EDC shall furnish and maintain adequate, efficient, safe and reasonable
					 service and facilities, and shall make repairs, changes, alterations,
					 substitutions, extensions and improvements in or to the service and facilities
					 necessary or proper for the accommodation, convenience and safety of its
					 patrons, employees and the public. The service shall be reasonably continuous
					 and without unreasonable interruptions or delay.
(b) An EDC shall install, maintain and
					 operate its distribution system in conformity with the applicable requirements
					 of the National Electrical Safety Code.
(c) An EDC shall make periodic inspections of
					 its equipment and facilities in accordance with good practice and in a manner
					 satisfactory to the Commission.
(d)
					 An EDC shall strive to prevent interruptions of electric service and, when
					 interruptions occur, restore service within the shortest reasonable time. If
					 service must be interrupted for maintenance purposes, an EDC should, where
					 reasonable and practicable, attempt to perform the work at a time which will
					 cause minimal inconvenience to customers and provide notice to customers in
					 advance of the interruption.
(e) An
					 EDC shall design and maintain procedures to achieve the reliability performance
					 benchmarks and minimum performance standards established by the
					 Commission.
(f) An EDC shall
					 develop and maintain a program for analyzing the service performance of its
					 circuits during the course of each year.
(g) An EDC shall maintain a 5-year historical
					 record of all known customer interruptions by category of interruption
					 duration, including the time, duration and cause of each interruption. An EDC
					 shall retain all records to support the reporting requirements under §
											57.195 (relating to reporting
					 requirements) for 5 years.
(h) An
					 EDC shall take measures necessary to meet the reliability performance
					 benchmarks and minimum performance standards established by the Commission.
(1) The performance standard shall be the
					 minimum level of EDC reliability performance allowed by the Commission for each
					 measure for all EDCs. Performance that does not meet the standard for any
					 reliability measure shall be the threshold for triggering additional scrutiny
					 and potential compliance enforcement actions by the Commission's prosecutorial
					 staff.
(i) The Commission will consider
					 historical performance levels, performance trends, and the number and type of
					 standards violated when determining appropriate additional monitoring and
					 compliance enforcement actions. The Commission will consider other information
					 and factors including an EDC's outage cause analysis, inspection and
					 maintenance goal data, operations and maintenance and capital expenditure data,
					 and staffing levels as presented in the quarterly and annual reports as well as
					 in filed incident reports.
(ii)
					 Additional monitoring and enforcement actions that may be taken are engaging in
					 additional remedial review, requiring additional EDC reporting, conducting an
					 informal investigation, initiating a formal complaint, requiring a formal
					 improvement plan with enforceable commitments, requiring an implementation
					 schedule, and assessing penalties and fines.