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Talk of the bay
Utilities want outages excluded from reports
By LOUIS HAU
Published January 31, 2005
Shortly before dawn on the day after Christmas, a freak winter storm packing winds in excess of 70 mph tore through the Tampa Bay area and left tens of thousands of residents without electricity.
Last week, Progress Energy Florida of St. Petersburg and Tampa Electric Co. asked the Florida Public Service Commission for permission to exclude the outages from their annual reliability reports.
About 60,000 Progress customers and about 21,000 Tampa Electric customers lost power because of the storm, bringing back unwelcome memories of the hurricanes that had wracked the area just a few months earlier.
Utilities periodically ask the PSC to exclude certain weather-related blackouts from their reliability reports on the grounds that they could not have reasonably prevented the outages and that such interruptions unfairly tarnish their service records.
Sometimes the tactic works, sometimes it doesn't. The PSC is scheduled to vote Tuesday on an earlier request from Tampa Electric to exclude outages triggered by severe weather in April and June. But the PSC staff has recommended that the commission reject the request, saying the utility filed its request too late.
[Last modified January 29, 2005, 00:58:02]
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