Compensations for power outages exceed € 13 million

In 2012, regional network operators paid more than € 13 million in compensations to consumers and businesses that were hit by extended outages (electricity and/or natural gas). The longest outage in 2012 lasted more than 24 hours, and occurred in the power grid of operator Stedin in parts of the town of Nieuwegein, which was struck by lightning. Compensations for households in this case totaled approximately € 1.5 million. Households receive € 35 per outage that lasts longer than four hours.

These are some of the findings revealed by the annual quality reports that the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) receives from the regional network operators, and by the 2012 Quality Factsheets about the quality and reliability of gas transmission networks and power grids, which were published today.

‘We regulate network operators so that consumers and businesses can have energy that is affordable and reliable,’ says Henk Don, Member of the Board of ACM. ‘That includes making sure energy customers are compensated when they are left without electricity or natural gas for an extended period of time, while having paid for these services.’

One in five outages in gas transmission networks and power grids occurs for unknown reasons. If network operators have insufficient knowledge of their networks, they are less able to predict the locations with the highest risks for future outages. Since 2008, the regional network operators have gained more and more knowledge of the age of the cables and pipes in their networks, as well as what material they are made of. This knowledge becomes all the more important considering the increasing amount of renewable energy that is injected into the networks, a development that calls for network operators to make the right investments in their networks. That is why ACM emphasizes that network operators fully and properly register the components in their networks.

In 2012, consumers and businesses were without any electricity, on average, for 26 minutes as a result of outages in the grids of the regional network operators. In 2011, it was 21 minutes. With regard to the gas transmission networks, ACM has observed an increase in the average downtime. The average downtime in 2008 was approximately 72 minutes, which was 154 minutes in 2012. In 2012, the average downtimes of network operators Delta Netwerkbedrijf and Endinet were relatively high with 330 and 276 minutes respectively. Both operators stated that a single major outage in their gas transmission networks had contributed to these high average downtimes of their networks.