HEA promises to fix Seldovia power problems…again

Keeping up with its longstanding policy of promising to fix things at some future date, HEA representatives again found money in the budget that reportedly wouldn’t extend to actually fixing things to instead travel to Seldovia last week to explain that at some undetermined time in the spring they will make everything wonderful.

Although they met with city and Tribe officials, the HEA delegation made no contact with any of their customers and they did not distribute their plans to anyone other than Seldovia blogger Jenny Chissus. In particular, none of the affected Eagle Run/Shoreline customers who were deprived of service all winter were notified of this latest plan.

What’s wrong with a company that cannot speak to its customers? Is this especially poignant when these same customers are in fact members of the co-op? HEA: has it ever occurred to you that this might be your problem, rather than the weather or the trees or the outages?

The gist of the HEA communication, which has been distributed only to a single blogger who now claims copyright on it and is thus publishing what can only be considered an unauthenticated version, is that at long last the switching capabilties that have been promised continually ever since the “new” generating plant went in six years ago may be realized. The schedule now is advanced to “shortly” and is promised to result in faster backup feed to those homes connected to the Seldovia plant.

In terms of the Eagle Run/Shoreline customers, there is a new promise, different from the previous promises made and not carried out this winter, to repair the loop by rerouting and tying it into a new drop next to the Young Street Dip. It’s said to be at the “top of HEA’s construction work plan.”

We have to admit that we don’t really understand what it is with HEA putting their transformer boxes where they flood. The one that is implicated in the present trouble, between the Wyland/Klinger properties, is underwater in the summer and abused by plowed snow in the winter. And given that this portion of the job is scheduled for as soon as “the ground has thawed and dried out,” we’re looking at the typical rainy Seldovia climate and wondering just when that’s going to be.

Of course, maybe that’s the whole point. After all, promising to do work solves HEA’s problem as they define it: that of customers complaining. So long as HEA isn’t interested in the problems its customers are experiencing, it’s a win for them.

So how has HEA FAILed this time?

• Another promise that pushes the solution date further into the future–and a potentially unachievable future at that;
• Continued demonstration that HEA has no interest in the current welfare of its customers impacted by service loss;
• Spending money that is purportedly in too short a supply to permit line repairs on coming over to promise to make repairs in the future;
• Continued disenfranchisement of co-op members by refusing to address them directly but instead holding private meetings with civic/tribal entities;
• Releasing their plans only to an unauthenticated blogger in copyrighted form with no official notice to actual affected customers.

HEA fails to report outages but makes new vague promises

As part of its investigation in response to the complaint filed by several Seldovia residents who have been removed from the local backup generator service, the Regulatory Commission of Alaska has noted that Homer Electric Assoc. has failed to report any service outages between March of 2005 and December, 2009.

All public utilities in the state are required to file outage reports to the commission

for an interruption of service, from whatever cause, which affects five percent or more of a utility’s total customers or affects a discrete community of customers, and persists for three hours or more, the written report must include a description of the cause and extent of the outage, and must be filed within five working days after service is restored (3 AAC 52.490)

A table on the RCA website lists and provides links to all of the filings they have received from HEA, and the word “outage” is clearly featured in the title of documents on that topic.

South-of-the-bay residents can attest to the fact that outages are experienced in Seldovia year-round and especially frequently during winter storms. The notion that for four years now there have been no outages that meet the state’s criteria for reportability was greeted by several correspondents as implausible. Is this a further demonstration of HEA’s explainist philosophy that “if no one talks about it, a problem doesn’t exist?” We await with interest HEA’s response to the RCA.

Meanwhile, in a publicity statement published by the commercial website seldovia.com but not published on the association’s own website, HEA’s Joe Gallagher apologized prettily for the outages and announced another round of promised improvements:

HEA is working on upgrades at the generation facility that will result in an ability to remotely check for faults on the line and install communication equipment that will improve the ability to energize the line serving Jakolof Bay Road residents…HEA will also be repairing the faulted underground line serving the Eagle Run area in Seldovia this coming construction season.

Given the promises already made to the Eagle Run/Shoreline loop customers, the completion dates for which passed without action, we asked several affected residents how much faith they put in these new promises with even more remote deadlines. Their answers uniformly expressed skepticism based on HEA’s previous track record on this issue, and noted that a longer timeline does have the nominal advantage of giving HEA longer relief from their complaints. And, of course, this does nothing to protect these customers from the ongoing risks to their safety and welfare during the outages that are likely to occur between now and whenever this work does or does not occur.

Gallagher does go on to note that

Until these upgrades are completed, and to better serve Seldovia members, HEA will monitor weather forecasts and during severe storm predictions in Kachemak Bay, station a journeyman lineman in Seldovia to expedite repairs whenever possible.

This does not address why HEA has refused Seldovian requests that a regular employee who already resides there be hired to do this, but does mean that the generating plant could be brought online sooner for those who are connected to it (depending upon the location of the specific outage-causing damage). That’s a positive step and worthy of gratitude, and we can only hope that HEA will continue this practice once the current climate of closer scrutiny is relaxed.

But it’s important not to allow the original concern for the specific victims of the service cut on Eagle Run/Shoreline to be diluted and side-tracked by general discussion of Seldovia and south-of-the-bay service issues. Improving general service is not the same thing as alleviating this ongoing risk to the safety and welfare of these elders and children and the impediment it poses to the conduct of business by neighborhood residents. By conflating these two issues, the specific service cut and general service improvement, those endangered voices are deprecated and their concerns can more easily be dismissed by HEA. That the RCA takes this complaint seriously is encouraging, because they have the muscle to change HEA’s behavior in ways that mere association owner/members seemingly do not.

Regulatory Commission responds to Seldovia complaint filing

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska has responded to the filing by Steve & Savannah Lewis, Mike Driscoll, and Steve Kroll of an “informal complaint” on the Seldovia neighborhood backup generator service situation. In a letter to HEA Member Services Manager Sandra Ghormley, M. Grace Salazar, chief of Consumer Protection & Public  Information for the RCA, writes:

While the Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) does not have authority to adjudicate right-of- way issues or award damages resulting from a power outage, our investigation of the informal complaint will focus on HEA’s outage contingency plan and whether HEA provided a reasonable level of uninterrupted service and speed of restoration of service after power outages in Seldovia.

Among other matters HEA may want to address, we request that HEA provide the following information:
1. The list of HEA customers in Seldovia, identifying their class of service and rates, and whether they are year-round or seasonal customers;
2. The reasons why HEA approached Mr. Steve Kroll in September 2009 regarding right-of-way through his lot and any pertinent information regarding backup generating system for Seldovia residents;
3. The list of outages in Seldovia beginning December 1,2009, ending March 8,2010. Please identify the cause and extent of the outage, the number of customers affected, and steps HEA took to reduce risk of threat to the health or safety of customers;
4. HEA’s planning and preventative maintenance procedures for the generating and backup facilities in Seldovia; and
5. HEA’s damage claim process available to customers who wish to file a claim for property damages resulting from power outages.

The full 2-page letter from Salazar may be downloaded in pdf format. The original sent to HEA and shared with the filing households also contained a copy of the full informal complaint form filed, a copy of this website, and copies of emails exchanged with HEA employees as neighborhood residents sought resolution of the problem. Those portions of the document are not included in the pdf offered here because they either repeat the information posted here  (the site content) or they have been marked “confidential” (the emails) by Salazar and were not shared with this correspondent.

HEA cuts off service to 19 Seldovia homes but goes on billing for it

This winter, Homer Electric Association denied electrical service without notice to 19 residences, leaving frail elders, families with young children, and other co-op members without light and heat in the depths of winter storms.

The problem

Those 19 residences on some 37 affected lots have historically been powered during outages of the main electrical system by the city backup generating system, a feature that is provided throughout the Seldovia city limits as a non-optional portion of HEA’s local service, for which all Seldovia accounts are billed at premium rates.

This year, management at Homer Electric Association made the decision to downgrade service to these 19 residences in Seldovia. Because that decision was not communicated to the residents, they were unable to make timely preparations to install alternative heating, generating and cooking facilities to provide for their welfare and safety. They did not learn that they had been disconnected from the system until an outage during a December storm when the power simply failed to come on. They were and continue to be, however, still billed at the premium rate for this undeliverable service.

What they experienced

In one household two frail 80-plus-year-olds, including one who is on supplemental oxygen, had not laid in a supply of firewood for their ornamental fireplace and could not obtain additional supplies in the dead of winter. They were reduced to using an unvented propane heater, loaned to them by the mayor, for heat. They also had no way of cooking food and became dependent upon their neighbors’ charity for meals.

In another household, home-schooled young children were also eating makeshift meals as their parents scrambled to obtain a portable generator to power their stove. Elsewhere, another family had to make an emergency generator purchase to preserve their freezer contents. A professional whose business is carried out online missed work deadlines, eroding marketability of business services. Residents in affected households were unable to travel for needed medical care, business meetings, and food shopping for fear of bad weather cutting off power and causing their houses and pets to freeze.

All of these things happened beyond the simple loss of quality of life resulting from struggling to keep unprepared homes from freezing up or to keep households functional in the cold and dark that lasted for days on end. All of these things were experienced while streetlights in front of their houses but on different circuits continued to shine, neighbors across the street had lights and heat, and the roar of the backup generator only two blocks away was clearly audible. All of these things were experienced without even notice that would have allowed these residents to prepare for this loss of service.

What HEA said

According to HEA, the source of the problem was failure of an old underground cable that was not replaced during the summer work season. Any restoration of a connection to the backup generator grid will cost the company money. These 19 residences and their residents are not worth that expenditure to HEA. The work will not be undertaken. These accounts will, however, continue to be billed for this undeliverable service.

What this ongoing loss of service will do

1. Some affected residents will leave, since decisions to live within city limits were in part based upon expectation of electrical service that would enable a certain quality of life and business operability.
2. Businesses shutting down will reduce city and borough sales tax revenues.
3. Seldovia will become less attractive to residents wanting to telecommute or to businesses that rely upon internet communications–populations actively being recruited by the city as a partial solution to their shrinking population and economic viability.
3. The resale value on aprox 37 lots will be reduced due to lower service levels there as compared to the rest of the city. Three of those residences are presently for sale and their owners and realtors will presumably be the first to feel the impact of not having the same level of service as lots elsewhere in the city.
4. This reduced value of lots will in turn reduce city and borough property tax revenues.
5. If HEA applies this same standard to other infrastructure failures in the future, Seldovia’s standard of living and economic viability will continue to be weakened by attrition.

Timeline

9-10/09: Steve Kroll approached by HEA to grant them a right-of-way through his lot, but implications of the need for this ROW or of the failure to grant it were not explained to him. Kroll declined to grant the ROW because he had just put in topsoil and landscaping, and this neighborhood had previously been told by HEA crews that their standard practice is to bury all of the topsoil down around their cables and replace it with rocks and rubbish fill on the surface. HEA subsequently responded to inquiries on the matter that this ROW was indeed being sought to replace the old failed cable in a more convenient (for them) location.

12/1-3/09: (late am to midafternoon, aprox. 2 1/2 days duration) Winter storm power outage that revealed loss of service. Seldovia Police Chief Andy Anderson, who notified affected residents, said he was told by HEA that this lack of service was due to removal of the neighborhood from the backup grid following on a critical switch location being moved. This establishes that HEA knew the implications of that switch move: that residences on the loop would be cut off from the city backup generator grid. Jeff Swick told Seldovia Mayor Keith Gain about the problem, and reports that Gain said he’d “raise a ruckus” with HEA. Local firewood dealer Dale Beasley, attempting to locate wood for the elders left with nothing but a fireplace, stated that his supply was depleted but he was trying to locate a source for them.

12/3/09: Steve Lewis notified Fitzgerald and Driscoll residence owners of the outage with respect to potential damage to their empty houses while the power was off. Lewis called HEA General Manager Brad Janorschke; an assistant took his name and information as to the problem. He received a call back from Don Smith, HEA manager of engineering & operations, during which they discussed the problem and set up an in-person meeting for Dec 9 in Homer. They also discussed the possibility of putting in a temporary above-ground drop as was used a few years earlier when the cable was replaced on Eagle Run Loop. Smith was  “very apologetic” and aware of the “you owe us credit for billing us services we’re disconnected from” concern of these co-op members. In personal conversations through the neighborhood, affected members agree to allow Lewis to communicate for them with HEA to effect a resolution in order to maintain a cooperative tone of working relationship.

12/4/09: Mike Driscoll called Joe Gallagher, HEA public relations coordinator, and reported that Gallagher confused the repaired segment on Eagle Run with the present problem and could offer no insight or assistance.

12/8/09: Driscoll received a call from Dale Marsengill, HEA operations superintendent, in which Marsengill stated that the problem is the loop on Bloch St. along the lotlines between the Klinger/Wyland properties. HEA is trying to reroute the cable (no explanation was provided of why the previous easement cannot be used) but cannot get permissions to do so.

12/9/09: Lewis missed in-person meeting due to fog preventing travel but spoke on phone with Marsengill to reschedule.

12/12/09: Driscoll emailed Lewis his permission to run a temporary drop to complete the needed loop through his property where a temporary drop was installed during previous work on Eagle Run Loop. In his email he also rhetorically asks why the known problem with flooding/cable degradation on the Bloch St. pedestal was not dealt with before the ground froze. Lewis forwards the Driscoll email to Smith with cc to Tim Dillon, Seldovia city manager. Smith replies to all with an email confirmation that HEA will place a temporary drop through the Driscoll property to reconnect affected residents to the city backup grid. Smith’s email notes that “due to scheduling commitments the project construction will not begin until after the first of the year. We have placed a high priority on this temporary and we will proceed as soon as possible.”

12/28/09: Lewis has an in-person meeting with Marsengill in Homer. At this meeting, they discussed the problem and scope of engineering solutions, and Lewis was told that the “crew on ground looking at it” and that work was to start “after the first of the year.”

2/10/10: One-day power outage with city generator running but no service to affected households.

2/11/10: Lewis phoned Marsengill: HEA’s plan now is not to put in a temporary drop but rather to move the switch controlling loop access to generator grid further out the Jakolof Bay Road to the Outside Beach cutoff, which will bring the neighborhood back onto the service grid. Timing on that is “next week or two.” “In the spring” HEA plans to replace the original, failed line along Hatch & Lewis/Seaport Cottages lot lines to the Klinger/Wyland pedestal.

3/5/10: Power outage beyond switch so neighborhood was successfully backfed from backup generator grid. Lewis called Marsengill and was told that the neighborhood “should be okay as long as nothing goes down between town and Jakolof”  but HEA’s plan now is that nothing will be done about any form of connection change until spring.

3/8/10 (1600) to 3/10/10 (about 1200): Power outage during which city grid was powered by backup generator but neighborhood was again without power. Lewis called Marsengill and Smith. Smith called back to report that any temporary drop would cost $33,000 and so would not be done; the switch could not be moved because the automation electricians were too busy; HEA has no plans to remedy the situation until “first thing after the frost goes out.” Smith calls this an “unfortunate situation” but offers no help in getting through the rest of the winter. Elders are now heating with an unvented propane heater and relying upon food donations from neighbors.

3/9/10: Lewis received call from Smith to say that repairs to line break causing main (area-wide) outage would be coming “soon”; Lewis told Smith that “April” work plan would be unacceptably late for wellbeing of affected co-op members.

Commentary

Although HEA’s mission statement states that the co-op’s role is

To provide reliable electricity to our members and our community through superior customer service & innovative energy solutions at fair and reasonable prices,

this situation calls into question just what “reliable” means in the context of this group of residences. “Superior customer service” is not in common parlance taken to mean “you’re not worth spending money on” even though “fair and reasonable prices” seems to include paying for services that HEA management has chosen not to deliver to the accounts being billed for it.

It is a fundamental tenet of customer relations that the first step to resolving a service issue is to acknowledge the customer’s complaint. The HEA board of directors and the management they hire doesn’t quite understand how this is meant to work. HEA puts its focus on silencing customer complaints by making promises of resolution that they then fail to carry out. This solves HEA’s “problem”  of complaining members but does nothing about actually solving the members’ problem. This is a fundamental flaw in the Wimpy school of economics, where the payment for today’s hamburger will only come next Tuesday. The Seldovia members of the HEA co-op have waited and waited for many Tuesdays and this winter, have found that they are no warmer for having done so.

What they want

1. Restore the connection to the backup generator grid before they face another winter storm and outage.
2. Credit affected members’ accounts for payments made for undeliverable services, retroactive to the date when the connection failed.

What they actually expect to happen

In the “spring,” outages will decrease due to ameliorating weather, although weather-mediated outages can and do happen throughout the year on the south side of Kachemak Bay. This easing of the weather will lead to a decrease in the residents of this neighborhood calling to complain and the matter will drop off the city’s agenda in favor of focus on summer busines. The HEA crew will be assigned by management to tasks elsewhere on which it places higher priority. By fall, the promised cable replacement work won’t be done. HEA will “notice” this with apologies when outages due to weather, along with member calls of complaint, increase in step with worsening fall weather. HEA will announce that it is too cold/late in the year to carry out the necessary work but it will be a priority for “next spring.” Lather, rinse, repeat. This is the expectation that HEA has taught its members to have of its promises.

The FAIL

HEA, you have FAILed to fulfill your mission; you have deliberately inflicted hardship and danger upon members of your co-op; you have profiteered by overbilling for services you do not provide; and you have damaged the economic welfare of the City of Seldovia and the Kenai Peninsula Borough.