Delivering Reliable Energy to Our Customers

Providing reliable service is at the heart of our business. By strengthening our energy foundation, we are preparing to meet our customers’ future needs. Photo: Lewis Stewart

To improve reliability, we continued to make significant investments last year in our infrastructure, investing more than $3 billion in our gas and electrical systems to serve new customers, meet customer and governmental agency demands and assure continuous safe and reliable operation of PG&E's transmission and distribution assets.

Our work last year included:

• Completing a targeted circuit improvement plan focusing on 20 of our least reliable circuits, installing overhead distribution line fuses and adding new line reclosers and control upgrades.
• Opening a state-of-the-art Grid Control Center with new tools and equipment to monitor and control the bulk electric transmission system for our entire service area—more than 18,000 miles of high voltage conductors.
• Collaborating with San Jose State University on a pilot project to better predict and plan for storm-related outages. Using a variety of current and historical data, the project will enable PG&E to estimate the number of outages by geographic region and the associated crews needed to restore power to the affected areas.
• Instituting a new rapid-response tactic known as "two and a crew" when there is an outage, which requires that two troublemen and a crew respond immediately to provide faster restoration. We also rely on the collaborative work of our restoration teams, who respond swiftly and safely after major storms and other events, such as the earthquake in Humboldt County earlier this year.

We continue to improve our system reliability according to industry-accepted reliability standards, as shown by the indicators below. In 2009, we out-performed our target on SAIFI, reducing the frequency of electric outages our customers experience to its lowest level in 22 years. We also achieved our best marks since 2000 on CAIDI, a measure of the duration of those outages. And we exceeded our target for SAIDI, which measures the average duration of outages per customer.

In addition to these important steps, PG&E has received approval from the CPUC for the Cornerstone Improvement Program, a major investment in our electric distribution system. The program will create more capacity and interconnectedness on the power grid, so outages can be isolated and power flows redirected onto neighboring circuits to restore service to customers as quickly as possible.

To improve gas service reliability, the company focused on a number of important initiatives last year, including an ambitious, multi-year project to replace aging copper pipe with more durable polyurethane pipe. The company also continued steps to improve and accelerate its pipeline integrity surveys, surveying 1.1 million gas services toward our goal of accomplishing 3 to 4 years of gas system surveying in 16 months. This effort was completed in 2010.

When combined with our routine gas leak survey program, we surveyed a total of nearly 1.9 million gas services in 2009. This work helped us identify, prioritize and address leaks faster and more efficiently, which led directly to significant improvements in the integrity and reliability of our gas system.