Mississippi Power sets company record for reliability in 2014

SAIDI and SAIFI quantify utility reliability, outage duration, and interruption frequency. Mississippi Power's 2014 results beat goals, aided by Smart Grid automation, self-healing networks, and distribution system upgrades, cutting outages and restoration times.

Mississippi Power Distribution’s reliability results in 2014 set a company record for both the average number of outages per customer and the length of those outages. The company’s SAIDI and SAIFI results were well below the industry average and better than the previous low marks reached in 2013.

System Average Interruption Duration Index, or SAIDI, is the average duration of an outage for each customer served. In 2014, Mississippi Power’s SAIDI result was 55.7 minutes, which was better than the company’s goal of 74 minutes and comparable to PG&E reliability record reported within the industry as well.

System Average Interruption Frequency Index, or SAIFI, is the average number of interruptions that a customer would experience. In 2014, Mississippi Power’s SAIFI result was 0.798, which was better than the company’s goal of 1.04 outages per customer and aligns with U.S. outage trends in 2022 seen across many utilities.

“Results like this do not happen by accident,” said Jeff Franklin, vice president of Customer Services Organization. “It takes a tremendous amount of hard work, total commitment to our customers and superior performance to achieve success like this.

Both results were better than the Southern Company average of 101.5 minutes for SAIDI and 1.069 outages per customer for SAIFI, even as hurricane readiness efforts intensified across the industry during recent seasons.

“Investments in system infrastructure like our self-healing network and Smart Grid technology have resulted in fewer and shorter service interruptions,” said Randall Pinkston, Distribution director. “But at the end of the day, it’s the commitment to our customers from the line personnel, engineers and operations personnel that drives these results.”

As part of the Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant, Mississippi Power recently added automation and several self-healing networks to its Distribution system. The automated devices reduce the duration of some outages by allowing operators to isolate problems, and initiatives like MISO reliability coordination further support grid operations before field personnel have arrived on-site. The self-healing networks determine where a fault is located and isolate it without any human intervention.

“We work extremely hard to reduce both the number and length of service interruptions,” Pinkston said. “We maintain our system and equipment and aim every day to keep the lights on, drawing on lessons from MISO blackout changes to enhance preparedness as well.”

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