Abstract— A survey on the assessment of electricity consumer interruption costs (CIC) from published literature in North America and Europe was conducted to identify the different approaches adopted by various countries and to make key observations including whether there is any international norm in such CIC assessment.  As customer survey was found out to be the de facto approach adopted by utilities in USA and Canada to assess CIC, a further literature search was conducted to ascertain the past practices of CIC customer surveys conducted in these two countries. Finally an attempt was made to compare the CIC in different countries and the results are presented with discussions.

I  Introduction

Information on consumer interruption costs (CIC) can be used to assess the economic efficiency of investments in power systems, to target investments to specific areas that receive the most benefit from system improvements, and to quantify the risk associated with different operating and planning strategies. Thus CIC has been a subject of investigation and assessment in various countries in the past few decades.