Proposals Due December 12
Steve Mitnick has authored five books on the economics, history, and people of the utilities industries. While in the consulting practice leadership of McKinsey & Co. and Marsh & McLennan, he advised utility leaders. He led a transmission development company and was a New York Governor’s chief energy advisor. Mitnick was an expert witness appearing before utility regulatory commissions of six states, D.C., FERC, and in Canada, and taught microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics at Georgetown University.
The PSC of West Virginia met on the twenty-fourth of September. At that session, the Commission modified a request for proposal for a management audit of electric service reliability. The Commission’s aim was to extend the deadlines for proposals and the resulting project.
The focus is to be that state’s distribution system served by Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power, operating companies of American Electric Power. Around four hundred and sixty-one thousand customers are served by that system.
PSC-ordered audits of utility operations are a routine and essential part of utility regulation. Back on the twenty-second of April, Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power along with Commission Staff filed for such an audit. Case 25-0396-E-P was opened. And soon after, the state’s Consumer Advocate Division was granted intervenor status.
Six specific areas were recommended for the audit. Including staffing levels (including line mechanics, line servicers, and front-line supervision), service center facilities (customer density, outage frequency, drive times, and terrain), the management of operations (maintenance prioritization, outage personnel management, planning), the accuracy of estimated time of restoration, a comparison to similar peer utilities, and effective short- and long-term improvements ranked on effectiveness in cost and reliability improvement.