Need to vent about a disaster with Avista here in Spokane. Client switched to primary service last year to save money on their Schedule 25 rate. Everything looked good - 4.2MW load, nice 10% voltage discount, customer-owned 5000kVA transformer. Then their transformer failed catastrophically in December during the cold snap. Avista took SIX DAYS to approve temporary secondary service while repairs were made. Client lost $180,000 in production. Anyone else seen utilities drag their feet on emergency reconnections for primary customers?
Avista Primary Service Horror Story
That's awful Janet. NYSEG here in Rochester has been pretty good about emergency service but they make primary customers sign waivers acknowledging longer restoration times. The trade-off for voltage discounts is accepting more risk. Did your client have backup generation or any redundancy?
No backup unfortunately - they figured the savings from primary service would justify the risk. That decision aged poorly. The really frustrating part was Avista had available secondary capacity but required three levels of engineering approval for the temporary connection. Meanwhile the clock was ticking on frozen pipes and lost production.
MLGW in Memphis learned from ice storms that primary customers need special treatment during emergencies. They pre-stage portable substations during severe weather forecasts. But that's municipal utility thinking - investor-owned utilities often have different priorities during outages. Sorry your client got burned.
Bobby - that's smart planning by MLGW. Avista's excuse was that portable equipment wasn't rated for the load and weather conditions. The transformer failure was a simple bushing flashover that should have been preventable with better maintenance. Now the client wants to sue but the tariff language protects the utility pretty well.
Janet - this is exactly why we always recommend redundant transformers or backup generation for critical loads switching to primary service. The voltage discount savings often justify the extra capital for N-1 reliability. Utilities will always prioritize secondary customers during emergencies because they own that infrastructure. Primary customers are essentially self-service when things go wrong.