SB2507 97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

LRB097 13715 CEL 58258 b

97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2011 and 2012
SB2507

Introduced 10/24/2011, by Sen. Susan Garrett

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:

220 ILCS 5/Art. XXIII heading new
220 ILCS 5/23-101 new
220 ILCS 5/23-105 new
220 ILCS 5/23-110 new
220 ILCS 5/23-115 new
220 ILCS 5/23-120 new
220 ILCS 5/23-125 new
220 ILCS 5/23-130 new

Amends the Public Utilities Act. Creates a new Article concerning electrical outages and emergency preparedness for electric utilities. Defines "area outage emergency". Provides that an electric utility must establish an Emergency Operations Center capable of receiving communications from municipalities and counties regarding down power lines or other damage during an area outage emergency. Provides that the failure of an electric utility to implement an emergency management plan or comply with plan provisions shall result in the denial of exemption from paying damages under the Act. Provides that an annual report shall be provided to a municipality or county that includes specified data sets. Provides that an electric utility is responsible for implementing the emergency management protocols and reporting requirements without diminishment of investment into the upgrade and maintenance of the existing system. Provides that the Illinois Commerce Commission shall take into account the performance of an electric utility in implementing emergency management protocols and reporting requirements in future rate increase cases. Provides that failure by the electric utility to implement emergency management protocols and reporting requirements, other specified criteria, or any diminishment of investment into the upgrade and maintenance of the existing system in order to meet the implementation of emergency management protocols and reporting requirements or critical public safety facilities restoration timeframes shall result in a decrease of 100 basis points in the return on equity sought within the future proposed rate increase case. Effective January 1, 2012.

A BILL FOR

AN ACT concerning regulation.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

Section 5. The Public Utilities Act is amended by adding Article 23 as follows:

(220 ILCS 5/Art. XXIII heading new)

ARTICLE XXIII. ELECTRICAL OUTAGES AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

(220 ILCS 5/23-101 new)

Sec. 23-101. Legislative findings.

(a) Severe storms of 2011 exposed systemic weaknesses in the performance of regulated electric utilities in terms of an electric utility's ability to respond to major emergencies and to coordinate with municipalities and counties who are charged with disaster mitigation and protecting public health, safety, and welfare. Shortcomings include:

(1) the inability to process, track, prioritize, and watch over down wires that obstruct first responders' access to streets and divert fire and police resources to protect wires for unreasonably long times;

(2) the inability to provide municipal and county leadership reliable and timely information regarding scope of an outage, location of stricken areas, availability of repair crews, and restoration data;

(3) being unprepared to identify and restore critical public infrastructure and facilities as specified in paragraph (3) of subsection (b) in Section 23-110 of this Act within a timely manner;

(4) the failure of an electric utility's customer service information systems, resulting in inundation of municipalities and counties with diverted electric utility customers and diversion of municipal and county resources from other critical functions; and

(5) widespread outages in the summer of 2011 that also identified shortcomings regarding infrastructure, maintenance, and vegetation management and information annually reported to municipalities; the impact of severe weather may have been greatly mitigated if vegetation management better protected lines, chronically troubled circuits had been addressed, and additional switches to permit re-routing of power had been installed; annual reports provided by the utility to local authorities lack adequate information on local system reliability, repeat non-weather related outages, routine maintenance, system monitoring, and planned infrastructure improvement to be useful.

(b) Electric utilities shall be held accountable under this Act for such substantial shortcomings and are required to take meaningful corrective action.

(c) The Commission is the appropriate agency to prepare and submit to the General Assembly information benchmarking electric utilities performance and restoration resources against those of comparable utilities. The Commission shall identify best practices and submit such data to the General Assembly for the development of additional future legislation.

(220 ILCS 5/23-105 new)

Sec. 23-105. Definitions. For the purposes of this Article, "area outage emergency" or "AOE" means:

(1) an outage caused by severe weather, natural disaster, disruption, damage or destruction of transmission or distribution facilities, or other event or related events in temporal proximity resulting in widespread loss of power locally or regionally;

(2) a loss of power to 30,000 or more customers system-wide; or

(3) a loss of power to 10% or more of customers in an individual municipality or county.

(220 ILCS 5/23-110 new)

Sec. 23-110. Emergency preparedness and emergency management.

(a) An electric utility must establish an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), staffed 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, capable of receiving communications from municipalities and counties regarding down power lines or other damage during an AOE.

The electric utility EOC must be able to receive messages by fax, phone, text, e-mail, or other agreed upon communications means.

The electric utility EOC must be able to transmit confirmation of receipt and acknowledgement of information.

In the case of a report by a public agency of down lines or equipment blocking streets, an electric utility EOC must be capable of providing information to municipality or county officials as to when utility crews and line watchers shall be dispatched and the estimated time to reopen a street or streets reported within 2 hours of receipt.

(b) The first 24 hours after onset of the AOE, an electric utility:

(1) shall initialize operations of a communications center to provide direct communication to municipal and county officials affected by the AOE;

(2) shall ensure that an external affairs representative is in direct contact with the municipality or county; and

(3) must receive and provide confirmation of receipt to municipality or county of priority of critical public safety facilities for restoration, including, but not limited to, the reopening:

(A) of streets to permit access for emergency response and disaster remediation;

(B) of potable water facilities, sanitary sewer and storm sewer facilities, treatment plants, pump stations, and lift stations;

(C) of hospitals and nursing homes; and

(D) of municipal and county emergency operations centers, relief shelters, police and fire facilities, and government telecommunications facilities.

(c) Within 48 hours after the onset of the AOE, an electric utility must provide:

(1) municipal or county officials with an on-site staff member qualified, authorized, and equipped to facilitate restoration efforts, assign crews, prioritize work to be performed, status of restoration of identified critical facilities, and capable of accessing utility information systems to direct prioritization of restoration work; an on-site utility staff member may be shared between multiple municipalities at a single municipal site, but no such shared site shall encompass more than 10 square miles; and

(2) the municipality or county, at least once every 4 hours, with a current summary of the number of customers out, number of repair tickets out, number of customers by repair tickets currently being worked, and the number of crews operating in that municipality.

(d) After 48 hours, an electric utility must continue to provide:

(1) a staff member and 4-hour updates until final 1% of customer restoration; and

(2) 4-hour updates until full restoration.

(e) An electric utility shall provide:

(1) a municipality or county with a report within 5 business days after completion of initial restoration detailing its plans for making full repairs and rebalancing of distribution system; the report must include a checklist of remaining repairs and a timetable for completion;

(2) an improve web-based electronic reporting system to provide real-time updates showing outages by municipal or county boundaries, more accurate information as to location and existence of outages, and information on repair crews dispatched; and

(3) a report, within 14 business days of completion of initial restoration, verifying compliance with the procedures required in this Section.

(f) An electric utility:

(1) shall utilize industry best practices to provide sufficient customer communications capacity through combination of telephone, internet, or other resources so that customers may promptly report outages, access information, and confirm restoration of service; and

(2) must identify performance measures on customer service in AOE situations as part of the annual report.

(g) An emergency management plan must implement all of the requirements of this Article. The emergency management plan must be delivered to the Commission, municipality, and county officials and be updated annually. The emergency management plan must identify and map which municipalities and counties may share an on-site utility staff member during an AOE and identify a site where staff members may be located.

(220 ILCS 5/23-115 new)

Sec. 23-115. Accountability.

(a) The failure of an electric utility to implement an emergency management plan or otherwise comply with this Act or rules adopted under this Act shall result in denial of a waiver from paying damages to customers under Section 16-125 of this Act.

(b) The failure of an electric utility to comply with plan provisions in a municipality or unincorporated area of a county shall result in denial of a waiver from paying damages to customers within municipality or unincorporated areas under Section 16-125 of this Act.

(c) The electric utility must give notice of application for a waiver from paying damages to customers under Section 16-125 of this Act to all covered municipalities and counties to permit them to object to the waiver. The Illinois Attorney General is authorized to appear for and represent all covered municipalities and counties in any proceedings.

(d) The electric utility must give public notice of an application for a waiver from paying damages to customers under Section 16-125 of this Act to permit members of the public to object to the petition. The Illinois Attorney General is authorized to appear for and represent all covered customers in any proceedings.

(220 ILCS 5/23-120 new)

Sec. 23-120. Annual reporting to municipalities.

(a) An annual report provided to a municipality or county shall be additionally provided in an electronic format and data sets in the report shall be sortable and searchable.

(b) The annual report must include the following:

(1) tree trimming by circuit for the report year, current year, and next year's schedule;

(2) capital investment by circuit, including, but not limited to lines, infrastructure, and transformers;

(3) outage analysis by circuit, including, but not limited to, wildlife, trees, storm, equipment failures, overhead versus underground lines, and comparable System Average Interruption Frequency Index and Customer Average Interruption Duration Index data;

(4) resident complaints, including, but not limited to, the number of complaints, type of complaint, work order responses, and restoration time;

(5) comparison of current year statistics versus the reporting year;

(6) a hazardous tree list;

(7) annual inspection report by circuit including, but not limited to the summary of what infrastructure issues are discovered, results of thermographic or other systematic evaluation of line conditions, inspection cycle, which circuits done, action plan, and corrective analysis;

(8) identification of problem areas based upon national standards;

(9) repeat and pocket outage analysis with action plan;

(10) smart grid implementation plan for municipalities and counties; and

(11) tracking customer waiting times and abandoned calls.

(220 ILCS 5/23-125 new)

Sec. 23-125. Reliability and system maintenance.

(a) The electric utility is responsible for implementing the emergency management protocols and reporting requirements described in this Article without diminishment of investment into the upgrade and maintenance of the existing system.

(b) The Commission shall take into account performance of an electric utility in implementing emergency management protocols and reporting requirements in future rate increase cases.

(c) The failure by the electric utility to implement emergency management protocols and reporting requirements, failure to restore 75% of critical public safety facilities as specified in paragraph (3) of subsection (b) in Section 23-110 of this Act within a 24-hour period upon declaration of an AOE or 90% of critical public safety facilities within a 36-hour period upon declaration of an AOE, or any diminishment of investment into the upgrade and maintenance of the existing system in order to meet the implementation of emergency management protocols and reporting requirements or critical public safety facilities restoration timeframes shall result in a decrease of 100 basis points in the return on equity sought within the future proposed rate increase case.

(220 ILCS 5/23-130 new)

Sec. 23-130. Direction to Commission; report to State leadership.

(a) The Commission shall adopt rules within one year after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 97th General Assembly implementing the provisions of this Article.

(b) The Commission shall deliver to the Governor, Speaker of the House, Senate President, House and Senate Minority Leaders, and Attorney General within 18 months after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 97th General Assembly a report providing data on industry best practices among regulated electricity-delivering utilities in the United States relating to major weather related outages, coordination with local authorities, public information, customer communication, restoration resources, including crews available per capita, per customer, and per square mile of service territory, and comparing Illinois regulated electric utilities to said benchmarks, and making recommendations based on such data.

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect January 1, 2012.