A.M. Shaalan
This paper overviews a study that has been conducted to investigate the effects of electric service interruptions upon customers resulting from unexpected outages due to power failures in power stations, networks and distributions systems.
Major classes of customers (residential, commercial, industrial) in the city of Riyadh have been selected as a practical case study to the developed methodology.
In this research a survey questionnaires has been distributed among the customers (by hand or mail) in order to let them by themselves assess their losses based on their perception during and after outages.
The results obtained show that a deep suffering and substantial monetary losses will be incurred by all customers should outages occur in specific periods and last for longer durations.
For the residential customer, results indicate that most of the losses will be intangible such as anxiety and inconvenience which are difficult to be evaluated in terms of monetary values. However, these may exceed the monetary losses as food spoilage or other emergency actions.
For the commercial and industrial customers, results show that these two sectors will incur substantial tangible losses as a result of shop closure and business cease due to energy shortage. It is noticed that these losses are increasing in a non-linear way as interruption durations increase.
Results also show that it is possible to avoid much of these suffering and losses if electric companies inform the customers well in advance of scheduled outages occurrences and their durations to enable them to utilize their standbys systems that should be available particularly to the commercial and industrial customers as a precautionary actions to avoid outages or at least to mitigate their effects.
The information and data provided by this study contribute to a great extent in assisting power systems planners and engineers in their assessment of cost/benefit of future system plans and then selecting among them the one that yields the most appropriate performance with the least cost. Also the study results could be useful in comparison with similar results in other places and conditions