FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC) Application for a Certificate of Public ...

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FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC or the Company)
Application for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity
for the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Project
Response to British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC or the Commission)
Information Request (IR) No. 1
Submission Date:
October 5, 2012
Page 204
99 percent of marijuana grow operations identified by FortisBC to date are in residential
premises which are billed under the residential tariff rates. This assumption is used in the
financial analysis.
Response:
87.1.4 Please explain why the theft detection rate related to AMI only increases
from eight percent to 25 percent by 2016.
FortisBC has used a conservative approach to estimating savings throughout this Application.
The theft detection strategy proposed by the Company will see strategic deployment of
downstream primary feeder meters. The location of the feeder meters will be guided by total
feeder loss measurements calculated using the Distribution Substation Automation equipment
already in place with the proposed AMI meters. This means that FortisBC will not be able to
immediately pinpoint the source of theft, but will segment feeders with downstream primary
feeder meters over time. For this reason FortisBC chose to conservatively predict a 25%
detection rate.
Response:
87.2 Please recalculate the ‘NPV of net benefit’ assuming implementation of AMI
results in a five percent per year decline in the number of total marijuana sites
under the AMI scenario (rather than a one percent per year increase).
For this question and the following sub-questions, please provide the analysis
supporting the NPV estimation; state all assumptions used; use FortisBC
incremental costs to supply theft sites to determine ‘power purchase cost from
theft sites’; and comment on the likelihood of each senario occurring and the
resultant impact on marijuana grow operations assumed in the question. Where
appropriate, please also provide a FortisBC estimate (or range of estimates) of
the expected impact of the marijuana grow operations resulting from each
scenario.
This scenario and the ones which follow in the sub-questions below demonstrate a range of
benefits from theft detection (each with a corresponding likelihood). This highlights the difficulty
of accurate prediction in an evolving technological, social and legal environment.
Considerably more certain is the continued public safety risk and financial cost to FortisBC
paying customers in the absence of AMI deployment.