This thesis describes the research conducted on the use of historical performance data in assessing the financial risk for a power distribution utility in a performance based regulation (PBR) regime. The historical utility data used in this research are taken from the Canadian Electrical Association (CEA) annual reports. The individual utility data in these reports are confidential and only provided to the participating utilities. Thirteen utilities that participate in the CEA data reporting activity agreed to provide their individual utility data for the research described in this thesis. These utilities are anonymous and are referred to by numerical designations in accordance with the CEA protocol. This research could not have been conducted without the support of these utilities. The objectives of the research described in this thesis are to examine and analyze the variations in the annual performance indices of the thirteen participating utilities and the aggregated systems including the overall indices and the cause code contributions, and to examine the possible utilization of historic utility reliability indices to create suitable reward/penalty structures in a PBR protocol. The potential financial risk and actual financial payment analyses for these selected utilities are conducted using their historical performance data imposed on a number of possible reward/penalty structures developed in this thesis. An approach to recognize adverse utility performance in the form of Major Outage Years (MOY) is developed and the influence of the MOY performance in PBR decision making is examined.

This thesis describes the research conducted on the use of historical performance data in assessing the financial risk for a power distribution utility in a performance based regulation (PBR) regime. The historical utility data used in this research are taken from the Canadian Electrical Association (CEA) annual reports. The individual utility data in these reports are confidential and only provided to the participating utilities. Thirteen utilities that participate in the CEA data reporting activity agreed to provide their individual utility data for the research described in this thesis. These utilities are anonymous and are referred to by numerical designations in accordance with the CEA protocol. This research could not have been conducted without the support of these utilities. The objectives of the research described in this thesis are to examine and analyze the variations in the annual performance indices of the thirteen participating utilities and the aggregated systems including the overall indices and the cause code contributions, and to examine the possible utilization of historic utility reliability indices to create suitable reward/penalty structures in a PBR protocol. The potential financial risk and actual financial payment analyses for these selected utilities are conducted using their historical performance data imposed on a number of possible reward/penalty structures developed in this thesis. An approach to recognize adverse utility performance in the form of Major Outage Years (MOY) is developed and the influence of the MOY performance in PBR decision making is examined.