STEP 4. OBTAINING APPROVAL 22 Approval Process Steps The basic steps to successfully pursue approval include the following: 1. Clarify and document a resiliency program objective, how a resiliency program can support the pursuit of the objective, and preliminary resiliency program plan, including a description of hardening, undergrounding, or other strategies anticipated. 2. Select a preliminary path to pursue approval – PUC versus Legislative. 3. Capture and describe outage history and performance. 4. Capture and describe national weather history and demonstrate an increase in severe storm frequency and severity in your service territory. 5. Work with public affairs, rates, and communications groups within the utility to build a community outreach program to describe and position the resiliency program. 6. Identify and/or recruit champions within the PUC or legislature depending on the path chosen. 7. Build a regulatory or legislative approval approach in order to gain approval of the program and cost recovery approach. Cost recovery approaches might include: a. Traditional Rate Recovery b. Accelerated Rate Recovery c. Customer/Geography Specific Funding d. Special Tax District e. Utility Set Aside f. Federal Funding Options Transportation Enhancements Program (Transportation Equity Act) Exhibit 4.1 Number of Customers Out of Power Over the Course of Major Weather Outage Events 2004-2013 Normalization of Outage to Peak Customer Impact to 1.0 and Duration to 1.0 Interpretive Note: The outage duration (horizontal axis) of every outage is normalized to 1.0 and the number of customers out of service (vertical axis) at any point in time is normalized to 1.0 representing total customers out at the peak of the outage. Source: Economic Benefits of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to Weather Outages, Executive Office of the President, 2013, pg. 21
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjE3MDU=