Power interruption costs to industrial and commercial consumers of electricity

This paper summarizes the results of a survey of 210 large commercial and industrial customers to obtain detailed descriptions of the components of interruption costs they would experience under varying outage conditions. In addition, the survey observed plant operating schedules, products and services, processes used, machinery used in production, backup generation and equipment designed to ensure power quality. The paper describes a statistical approach for obtaining inexpensive outage cost estimates for individual customers by combining information from onsite interviews with less costly information obtained from utility representatives. Results from regression models estimated from the information obtained in the onsite survey are described in detail.