STEP 1. DEFINING PROGRAM OBJECTIVES 4 Undergrounding strategies are explored in the Playbook to support hardening efforts and ultimately pursue improved resiliency. Undergrounding is defined as installation of new or relocation of existing electric infrastructure underground to remove any exposure to certain types of extreme weather. Determine What You Want to Accomplish Building clarity around a specific resiliency program or any undergrounding strategy is critical. In general, nearly all resiliency efforts, and more broadly, reliability efforts, are designed to positively impact customer satisfaction. Because these efforts will typically only impact a small percentage of existing infrastructure, the traditional measures of reliability performance (SAIDI, SAIFI, etc.) often swamp any improvement achieved. As an example, a resiliency program might underground at-risk infrastructure that has in the past taken three to five days to repair. The small number of customers affected by the longer duration is a small percentage of the total outage minutes. Research has shown that customer satisfaction is highly impacted by long-duration outages; even when this duration affects a very small population of a utility’s customer base. One model for the selection of resiliency investment options is presented in Exhibit 1.2. The scenario-based risk assessment concept might consider scenarios with a focus on six areas where a singular goal or objective could be set to help focus the resiliency efforts. Customer satisfaction: Aesthetics – Many municipal governments, developers, businesses, and homeowners value the aesthetic of undergrounding very highly because they choose to pay the cost differential between undergrounding and overhead themselves (#91, pg. 3). In addition to increased property value, undergrounding is frequently required or encouraged by municipal or permitting authorities for the installation of new line or equipment. An example goal: Meet or exceed all municipal or permitting authority required or encouraged undergrounding of electric infrastructure. Customer satisfaction: Outage frequency reduction – Routine and traditional root cause analysis can identify line segments or equipment types exhibiting higher frequency outage occurrence. Once analyzed, strategies and tactics can be undertaken to make these line segments or equipment more resilient and reliable. An example goal: Line segments or equipment types exhibiting outage frequency Exhibit 1.2 Resiliency Investment Selection Model Source: Mukhopadhyay, Sayanti & Hastak, Makarand, Public Utility Commissions to Foster Resilience Investment in Power Grid Infrastructure, 2016, pg. 9.
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