20080815Comments.pdf

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From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
ghservice(grtci. net
Thursday, August 14, 20086:45 AM
Jean Jewell; Beverly Barker; Gene Fadness; Ed Howell
PUC Comment Form
A Comment from Gary Hickenlooper follows:
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Case Number: IPC-E-08-10
Name: Gary Hickenlooper
Address: 590 W. Ladd Circle
City: Hammett
State: ID
Zip: 83627
Daytime Telephone: [phone]
Contact E-Mail: ghservice~rtci.net
Name of Utility Company: Idaho Power
Add to Mailing List: noe-
Please describe your comment briefly:
Idaho Power's stated justification for a rate increase by their own statement includes
providing reliable power to its customers. Is there a metric for assessing their performance
in this area? Do they provide information to the IPUC showing areas of their service
territory having reliability issues and also showing how they are addressing those areas? Are
all problem areas disclosed or only select ones?
Unless things have changed over the years, Idaho Power can not log power losses that
automatically reclose. What effort do they expend attempting to determine service areas that
have such events? How much do they solicit input from customers in those areas and how easy
is it to make such input? When input is received, how much effort is applied toward improving
the situation?
A number of years ago (I'm guessing about 15 years ago) Hammett experienced frequent short
power events that were not logged due to automatic reclosure. It was bad enough that all
digital clocks would need to be reset at least weekly and sometimes more than once in a day.
After some investigation by IPUC, a short time after IPUC requests for information from Idaho
Power, the situation changed dramatically. The power in Hammett was rarely off for even short
periods of time. I have no idea what they did but whatever it was it took care of the issues
for many years. That is up until this year. Over the last month or two we have been without
power in Hammett for more than 38 hours. Those hours include one event that had us off for
over 24 hours. Two more recent events comprise another 14 or more hours. There is some
question in my mind as to whether or not Idaho Power has cut back on emergency service
capability to save money. Hammett appears to be low on the priority list in the case of large
area outages. In fact, this is usually the last area they bring back on line. While I can
understand their priority to get the larger areas back on line first I still question whether
they have cut back too far on emergency capabilities. I do know that they have outside
contract crews they call in to offset their lack of manpower in larger events, however
considering the relatively small size of service area affected with our 24 plus hour outage
it leaves me wondering about what would happen in a truly large outage situation.
The most recent event, comprising over 4 hours of outage in Hammett, I had an opportunity to
find out the cause. This is rare because generally Idaho Power's recorded message addressing
an affected area do not specify what the cause was. If they do give any information as to the
cause it is very limited. Today their recorded message indicated a pole needed to be replaced
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due to a range fire. I contacted Elmore County Sheriff Dispatch to find out where the fire
was. They told me it was north of milepost 112, which is one of the Hammett exits. We drove
out to see what had happened and had an opportunity to ask a driver of a BLM fire truck what
started the fire. As it turns out it was failure of Idaho Pow~r' s line that started the pole
on fire which then started a small range fire.
The power event prior to this one, a week or two ago, that left us without power for more
than 8 hours was two poles down according to Idaho Power's recorded message. There was no
indication as to where those poles were located or why they went down. Was this situation
another failure of their equipment or just an unfortunate event out of their control?
I suppose my points here are that a large portion of the lines, poles and equipment serving
Hammett were installed 60 years or more ago and are therefore prone to failure due to age and
the fact Hammett is growing. The methods and routing used 60 years ago quite possibly are not
reliable today either. As near as I can tell, living in Hammett for 23 years, nothing has
been done in this area in the form of preventative maintenance or upgrades. Some of the poles
here have had short poles installed next to them and the two tied together to 'prop' up the
poles. Some poles are so old, dry and cracked I'm expecting the next wind storm to bring them
down. It appears to me that Idaho Power's approach to this area is to fix problems only when
the system fails. This puts us at risk for a large number of future failures. Outages are not
only inconvenient but can destroy electronic equipment, cause loss of refrigerated food and
use up large quantities of batteries that are backups for things like carbon monoxide alarms,
sprinkler timers and the like.
If Idaho Power is going to use reliable power as a reason for rate increases it is going to
be necessary for them to actually use funds to fix areas such as Hammett. It would also
behoove IPUC to seek documentation from Idaho Power that they are actually doing so. In fact,
it would be interesting for IPUC to actively seek customer input on satisfaction with Idaho
Power to ascertain how well they are doing in the public's eye and to identify possible areas
needing improvement that may not otherwise be visible to IPUC. A yearly survey of a select
sample of customers in each service area by mail might be something of value.
While the numerous power issues in Hammett recently may be due to simply a group of unusual
unfortunate events, considering the age of the equipment and the lack of preventative
maintenance and improvements it is likely a lot more issues will show up very well in the
near future. I also believe IPUC should look closely at the time it is taking Idaho Power to
restore power in small events and determine if they are adequate, especially in the case of a
large outage.
The form submitted on http://www.puc . idaho.gov/forms/ipuc1/ipuc .html
IP address is 12.213.224.57
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