Industrial customer outage cost analysis: a case study of Nepal

Abstract

The electric utilities in the developing countries lack sufficient data required for long-term electricity supply system planning which have resulted in wide gap between demand and supply in these countries. Also, there is lack of coordination among different constituents of electric utilities generation, transmission and distribution. Vital data for system planning are often unavailable and planning is done in some arbitrary manner causing long-term financial and economical impact on the whole nation. Customers’ electricity supply outages data and supply outage costs are very important for financial and economical analysis of an electricity supply system. Quantifying the losses to customers will enable us to check whether a proposed system expansion plan will be economically viable or not. Industrial customers form the backbone of any country’s economy. Hence, the supply outage cost to the industrial customers deserves close attention. After quantifying cost incurred by industrial customers because of nonsupply of electricity, the planners and policy makers will be forced to seriously consider about the ways of minimizing these outages and their adverse impact on the customers. In this paper, we will describe an industrial customer survey carried out in Nepal to determine their outage cost. Results of the survey can be used as reference electricity supply outage cost values in other developing countries with similar socio-economic profile.