As part of its penance from a state regulatory proceeding that was critical of its storm-related response and reliability issues in recent years, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. this year will conduct a major customer survey on “value of service,” particularly how customers value reliability in their utility service. The work, which will be done by outside consultants, was mandated by the California Public Utilities Commission.

So far, there are no conceptual outlines for the work product, and the survey results are not needed until the utility files its next (test year 2007) general rate case with the CPUC by the end of this year, a San Francisco-based PG&E utility spokesperson said Tuesday. “It will be completed some time in 2005.”

The utility consumer group, TURN (The Utility Reform Network), which was a party in the CPUC storm response/reliability proceeding, recommended that the regulatory commission require PG&E’s utility to survey customers in terms of their willingness to pay extra to avoid outages, and their willingness to undergo losses of service (frequency and time duration).

With the consulting firm of Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3), the utility held a meeting last month in its San Francisco headquarters, but according to the spokesperson, no conclusions about the study were reached. TURN and other stakeholders participated in that meeting, as did CPUC representatives.

A point of contention at these early stages is whether customers are actually surveyed for their responses, or customer service records and data are reviewed and analyzed on billing and outage issues. The former is viewed as being more time-consuming and costly, and in case it is adopted, the utility has indicated it might have to submit the results to the CPUC at a time after it files its notice-of-intent (NOI) on its next general rate case.

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