Understanding commercial losses resulting from electric service interruptions

A summary of research conducted to determine the effect of outage costs on commercial consumers having electric standby systems and to identify customer related and interruption related variables that affect the losses is presented. It is shown that consumption and demand normalized outage costs for users having no standby systems are higher typically by three times when compared with users having standby systems. No significant differences were observed between battery and engine-driven standby systems. Variation in outage costs with respondent category was studied. Respondents indicated that they could make significant cost savings arrangements if provided with advance warning or duration information of the interruption. 45% of all respondents having standby systems indicated there were health or safety hazards due to interruptions.<>