Outage customers get extra $75 credit

Some Utah Power customers who lost their electricity during a 2003 holiday power outage can expect to see an additional credit to their electricity bills.

The 2003 outages knocked out power to 190,000 Wasatch Front customers during the Christmas-New Year's holiday week, keeping some homes and businesses in the dark for up to five consecutive days.

The outages prompted Salt Lake attorney David Irvine in 2004 to file a complaint on behalf of four Wasatch Front residents who went without electricity for roughly three days. The complaint was subsequently expanded to include the original parties, plus two insurance carriers, which hold subrogated claims for about 24 people.

Under the agreement reached by Irvine and Utah Power, all residential customers of the utility who went without electricity for 96 hours or more will receive an additional $75 credit.

In addition, commercial and industrial customers who went without power 48 hours or more will receive credits of $500 to $2,200. Dave Eskelsen, a spokesman for Utah Power, said the total additional monetary credits amount to less than $1 million. If approved by the Public Service Commission, they will be credited automatically to customers' bills.

About a month after the 2003 holiday outages, Utah Power handed out $1.9 million to 14,474 customers who went without power for 48 hours or more as a gesture of goodwill.

The settlement also requires Utah Power to be current on its three-year tree-trimming cycle. At the time of the massive outages, Utah Power was on a 6.4-year trim cycle, which contributed to the disruptions, according to a report by Florida-based Williams Consulting Inc.

The utility also agreed in the settlement to review annually 25 percent to 41 percent of its distribution line miles in Utah. Leaking electrical equipment, burning electrical connections, broken insulators, trees in primary conductors, unsecured primary conductors and broken guy wires must be repaired or corrected within 120 days of the date the problem is identified, according to the settlement, beginning July 1, 2007.

"The thing that we were particularly interested in was a hard commitment from the company to get on and stay on a three-year vegetation management cycle," Irvine said. "It has not been an easy process. We appreciate the fact that we've finally got negotiations to a point where everybody felt good about it."

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E-mail: danderton@desnews.com