July 20, 2001—Power outages and other power disturbances are costing the U.S. economy more than $119 billion annually, according to a recent study sponsored by The Electric Power Research Institute.
Titled “The Cost of Power Disturbances to Industrial & Digital Economy Companies,” the study highlights several industries’ growing need for “digital quality” electricity—meaning always perfect and always on. The study also shows that California firms experience the highest costs in the nation for both power outages and power quality disturbances.
“U.S. business activity is becoming more reliant on digital circuitry and more sensitive to incredibly minute variations in power supply—variations that would have gone unnoticed in years past. The results of this study emphasize the need for the energy industry to work with equipment manufacturers and end-use customers to maximize power reliability and quality, and develop a systematic approach to meeting electricity supply requirements in the 21st century,” said Clark Gellings, EPRI vice president of energy utilization.
The study involved interviews with a statistically representative sample of 985 firms in three sectors of the U.S. economy that represent 40 per cent of the U.S. gross domestic product and show particular sensitivity to power disturbances.
The study shows that the roughly 2 million establishments in all three sectors collectively lose $45.7 billion annually to outages, and another $6.7 billion to power quality disturbances, such as voltage sags and other occurrences that do not allow equipment to function properly, causing temporary work stoppages, loss of data and other problems.
Besides extrapolating the survey data to the entire U.S. economy, the study also breaks down power outage and quality loss cost figures by state. California shows the highest costs for both outages and power quality disturbances (between $13.2 billion and $20.4 billion total—without rolling blackouts), followed by Texas ($8.3 billion to $13.2 billion) and New York ($8 billion to $12.6 billion). The study notes that costs to California industry likely will increase dramatically if the state experiences a significant number of rolling blackouts in the summer of 2001.
EPRI’s Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society (CEIDS) is a collaborative effort designed to develop the technologies needed to bolster and expand the current electricity infrastructure, and to create a new infrastructure to support the changing power demands of a digital society.
For more information on the power outage/disturbance contact EPRI. For additional information about CEIDS, call 1-800-313-3774.
