Average residential outage cost estimates for the lower 48 states in the US

A-Tier
Journal: Energy Economics
Year: 2021
Volume: 98
Issue: C

Authors (4)

Woo, C.K. (not in RePEc) Tishler, A. (not in RePEc) Zarnikau, J. (University of Texas-Austin) Chen, Y. (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Motivated by diverse residential electricity outage cost estimates and possible hypothetical bias of contingent valuation (CV) survey data, this paper proposes a simple formula for market-based estimation of residential outage costs. Its key finding is that average residential outage cost estimates for the lower 48 states of the US range from US$0.12 to US$0.34 per kWh unserved, below the regional CV-based estimates of US$1.0 to US$4.2 per kWh unserved found by a national study. It makes three contributions to the literature of residential outage cost estimation. First, it obviates collecting and analysing CV survey data for estimating average residential outage costs. Second, its proposed formula has minimal data requirements and is applicable to any city, state, region, or country. Finally, it details the policy implications of our newly found empirics in electricity pricing, resource planning, resource procurement, electricity product differentiation, and performance-based regulation of electricity reliability.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:eneeco:v:98:y:2021:i:c:s0140988321001754
Journal Field
Energy
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-29