Belmont Light receives national recognition for reliability, response times

Category: Uncategorized   |   Posted On: March 21, 2019

Belmont Light has been awarded the Certificate for Excellence in Reliability for the year 2018 by the American Public Power Association (APPA), marking the third time in four years that the local utility has been honored with the distinction.  The award is given yearly by APPA to utilities who achieve exceptionally high reliability rates compared to the national average.

“The team at Belmont Light prides itself on our ability to provide our community with reliable electric service,” said Craig Spinale, Belmont Light Assistant General Manager.  “And when outages do occur, we are determined to get the power back on as swiftly and efficiently as possible.”

Spinale reviewed the specific reliability ratings, tracked by APPA, that made 2018 an outstanding year for Belmont Light.  In 2018, the average Belmont Light customer experienced 56 minutes of power interruption, as opposed to over 174 minutes for the average New England customer and the national average of over 202 minutes.  In terms of frequency, the average Belmont Light customer experienced 0.53 outages in 2018.  The national average was 0.95 outages and the New England average was 1.02 outages, which means that utility customers outside of town are about twice as likely to lose power as Belmont Light customers. 

Belmont Light had previously been awarded the Certificate for Excellence in Reliability for the years 2015 and 2016.  In 2017, the planned outages to switch over Belmont’s electric delivery system to the new Blair Pond Substation caused aberrational declines in Belmont Light’s reliability ratings, causing the utility to miss out on the certificate.

Spinale said that while he’s happy with the recognition for 2018, Belmont Light will only use the accolade as motivation for 2019 and beyond. “We will keep looking for any opportunity to invest and improve on our system to continue to provide the highest level of service to the Belmont community possible.”