Value of Electricity Service Studies

FSC has conducted numerous studies across customer classes and throughout the U.S. and has been at the forefront of advances in Value of Service (VOS) techniques and applications. VOS studies make use of advanced survey and statistical techniques to measure the value of service associated with service reliability and/or quality in situations where they are directly available through market prices. By quantifying those values accurately and identifying the factors that affect them, VOS studies help utilities provide the best possible service to their customers and more effectively target their resources and investments. Not only are VOS estimates useful in transmission and distribution planning, but information about outage cost distributions and partial outage costs can be used to target demand response programs, design capacity markets, and to develop strategies to manage curtailments.

Highlights from our extensive VOS work include:

  • Writing the Outage Cost Estimation Guidebook for the Electric Power Resource Institute (EPRI), setting forth the latest techniques, methodologies, and applications of VOS studies in the power industry.
  • Developing a framework for integration and analysis of outage costs and conducting the first and only national study in the field for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Designing and implementing one of the few examples of value-based distribution planning in the U.S. This work included using statistical models to tailor value of service estimates for each of approximately 1,900 distribution circuits, as well as quantifying the financial impacts of adopting value-based reliability planning.