CHARLESTON, W.Va. –The Public Service Commission of West Virginia has ordered two major electric utilities to undergo an independent audit of the reliability of their customer service.
Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power will conduct the electric service audit following a joint petition filed by the companies and the PSC on April 22.
The order comes after the PSC received numerous complaints about service interruptions involving the two companies, as well as concerns about their failure to meet reliability improvement targets set by the commission.
More specifically, the PSC has recently expressed concern over the duration of outages and the steps the companies plan to take to minimize them moving forward.
Appalachian Power Spokesperson Debby Pannell said the company is actively working to meet the reliability improvement targets and welcomes the collaboration with the PSC.
“We’re doing everything we can to increase that reliability and we thinks it’s an excellent opportunity to work with the commission and an outside firm to look at everything and develop a plan to provide better service to our customers,” Pannell said.
According to the PSC’s order, the audit will focus on six areas of concern: staffing levels, company service center facilities, how each utility manages the operation of its distribution system, opportunities to improve the accuracy of estimated restoration times for customers, and a comparison of their systems with those of other utility companies.
The final area is intended to help the companies identify and implement improvements where needed.
“And then recommendations for short term improvements 1 to 3 years and also longer term 3 to 10 years,” Pannell said.
She said that, at this time, there is no timeline on how long the audit will take, but there are some deadlines they must meet before the audit can begin.
“The companies, meaning Appalachian Power need to solicit bids for the audit by August 15 and then the commission would select the auditor firm by September one,” Pannell said. “So, at that point we’re start moving forward.”
The commission stated the order should be used “to act timely to improve electricity reliability for its customers.”
The full audit must be submitted to the commission no later than December 31.