DOE’s Biggest Failure to the American People

An ongoing failure to the American Public is something called the “ICE Calculator” which measures the cost of an outage. 40 years ago, it was a useful tool that the industry and regulators adopted as a tool for determining what was reasonable to spend to improve reliability.

Today operating off pre-world-wide-web data. The calculator predates hybrid working situations, electric vehicles and the energy transition it is as useful as building houses to live in without windows in the openings or insulation in the walls.

This out-of-date calculator is used by utilities and commissions both to determine if a line should be placed underground or should just have a few stronger poles. It is used to determine, in states that reimburse for outages, what that reimbursement should be. It determines vegetation management practices and budgets. It is also used as a basis for the number of trained crews the utility has on staff.

The calculator needs a refresh, not just of the math, but of the underlying data. We have Sam’s club and garage freezers, it does not – so the loss of food calculation is off. We have cellphones and home internet, it does not – so the lost wages are off. I could go on and on, but the reality is that the ICE calculator has suffered from neglect for decades. The budget requests to update the data have been made repeatedly and ignored in both the house and the senate.

We can spend trillions to build for the future, but to spend $10 million to provide the basis for how to spend it, no, not a priority, a waste of money, so I have been told in discussions with staffers.

The question is, "Is there one member of Congress who will insert this into the Energy Department Budget and fix this failure and the misspending of trillions of dollars?"

One?!?