COST OF ELECTRICITY SUPPLY INTERRUPTIONS TO AGRICULTURAL SECTOR CUSTOMERS

Abstract

Economic operation of power systems demands consideration of the worth of electric service reliability to the customers. This worth is presently assessed in terms of the costs associated with power interruptions. This thesis provides an overview of the methods used for interruption cost estimation. One of these methods, the method of customer surveys, has been utilized by the Power System Research Group at the University of Saskatchewan for two research projects which surveyed residential, agricultural, industrial, commercial, and large user customers. Both projects were sponsored by the Canadian Electrical Association. The more recent of these projects surveyed agricultural sector electrical customers. The primary objective of this thesis is the analysis of the data collected during this project. The thesis presents a methodology which can be used to calculate monetary values from the survey raw responses. Sector Customer Damage Functions together with individual Standard Industrial Classification Class Customer Damage Functions obtained from three types of questions are shown and compared. Statistical analysis of the agricultural sector data is used to draw some important conclusions. Among the primary findings of this analysis is that the type of customer appears to be the most significant user related characteristic and that the cost estimates are essentially transferable from region to region. The agricultural sector Customer Damage Function is compared with Customer Damage Functions from the other sectors and a Composite Customer Damage Function is calculated for the three service areas. The effect of approximating the Composite Customer Damage Function by a constant value is also addressed.