APPA recognizes member utilities for reliability efforts with Certificates of Excellence

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 31, 2021

The American Public Power Association (APPA) has honored more than 180 public power utilities with a “Certificate of Excellence” for reliable performance in 2020.

Only utilities that are subscribers of the eReliability Tracker are eligible to earn these certificates. To earn a certificate, a utility’s 2020 System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) must fall in the top quartile of all utilities’ SAIDI numbers averaged from the past 5 years based on Energy Information Administration 861 survey data.

The certificates celebrate utilities that have provided exceptionally reliable service and power to their communities.

When looking at eReliability Tracker subscribers’ 2020 outage data, 92% of utilities that verified their 2020 outage data had a 2020 SAIDI that was below the average national SAIDI for 2015-2019 (according to EIA data). This data also includes investor-owned utilities and cooperatives.

As this statistic shows, public power providers are generally above-average in reliablity, especially when compared to all utilities providing power in the U.S.

The list of winners is here.