I want to toss out an idea for comment regarding power outages.? In the present storm, my power was restored within two days.? The? last time in August/September 2o11, it took almost seven days.
When large disasters occur, utilities bid for the services of power crews that are out of the area.? There should be some incentive to make them bid aggressively for additional power crews.
Here is my incentive:
- Those not restored in 3 full days get one month of free electricity.
- Those not restored in 5 full days get three months of free electricity.
- Those not restored in 7 full days get one year of free electricity.
The idea is threefold:
- The utilities pay in their own product, thus softening the blow on them.
- As time progresses, the costs/inconveniences mount for those without power; this gives companies an incentive to bid for power crews, because the longer people are without power, the greater the future revenue loss.
- The results of the penalty get delivered to those most inconvenienced, and in a way that is fitting — you might even have some people smiling as they sit in the dark, knowing that their reward builds exponentially as they wait.
I like this idea, because it is a minimalist way of giving incentives to the utilities to restore service.? In both this disaster and the one last August/September, my local utility said, “We are doing all that we can.”? Nonsense.? Other utilities were more aggressive in bidding for power crews.
Comments are welcome.? This idea is just a rough stab, but I think it would go a long way toward restoring equity to those that are most inconvenienced be power outages.
PS — As an aside, as the internet has become more important in the lives of people, and even more the mobile internet, it is fascinating to watch how people seek out opportunities to charge up or log in as the crisis progresses, much as they would seek out ice, nonperishable food, and other necessities as the crisis progresses.
The idea is OK, but the devil is in the detail.
There’s a risk that people abuse it, e.g. if they get 3 months free electricity at the beginning of winter, they can switch to electric heating — the devices are dirt cheap, very much cheaper than 3 winter months’ worth of your regular heating fuel — for that period, which is abuse and wasteful because electric heating is one of the least efficient tech (full cycle) for space heating. I can imagine other ways to arbitrage the free electricity. This is fixable though: give a credit worth N months past consumption, rather than a blank forward cheque.
There’s also a risk that they provision for these fines and/or expensive remedy at the expense of customers who for some reason or other are at a lower risk/cost of outages, which may be OK or not. Utilities can’t really be easily liquidated either, so if introducing fat tail fines causes bankruptcies, the system cost of resolving that has to be taken into account.
On a more technical matter, I doubt about a fine in the form of free electricity is at all “softening the blow” compared to the matching dollar fine, in the presence of capital markets and fungible money. Also I don’t know how it works in the US but elsewhere it’s common for the corporation which operates the power plants to be different from the one which runs the network which is again different from the one which invoices customers, so you need blame accounting (the invoicing company is unlikely to be the one responsible!) and corresponding monetary transfers anyway.
That’s why I put this out for comment. What you say in your second paragraph is closer to what I want.
I echo support for your negative incentive plan.
I also think the utilities should be obligated to report, in detail, to each customer who had a disruption in power, the root cause of their particular problem. I live in a mature neighborhood where all lines are below ground. No power for 3 days. If my root cause suggested a potential for a recurrence, that might prompt me to consider a back up generator
I also found the dependence on Internet access amazing. As a Verizon Fios customer with no electricity for 3 days I was also without WiFi access.
Maybe as part of an emergency response, county/State/federal could broadcast a temporary, free WiFi signal.
The obvious follow-up question to this one is what has really changed in emergency response efforts since 9/11 etc
This is a typical “just throw money at it” band-aid, not a solution at all.
I am not sure I understand why shareholders need to be penalized for decisions made by management — and that is who would initially pay for your idea.
In lala land, management are accountable to shareholders, but in the real world the CEO almost cannot be fired (not even by hedge funds with significant holdings).
Make the CEO (and other senior management) pay out of their own pocket, and make it a felony for their crony board members to give reimbursements … that would be a true incentive.
It should also be mentioned that part of the problem starts from the utility workers union … they know the public will scream about their lost power, and politicians are too quick to cave in to all union corruption
The guys who have to climb the telephone poles in the snow / heatwave / hurricane are one thing, they perhaps should get some extra incentives.
But most of the workers who get “hazard pay” during these power outages are sitting in utility owned cars eating donuts. Why should customers and shareholders subsidize this nonsense?
Force the utility management **AND** the union leadership to all compensate customers.
Otherwise, you are just robbing Peter to pay Paul, neither of whom has any ability to get your power back on