At a distribution company, walking into a management meeting with "SAIDI came in at such-and-such this month" is easy. The hard part is the question that follows: is that good or bad? Better than last period? Where does it sit against the target, and against comparable companies?
A single number, however carefully calculated, does not produce a decision. Benchmarking fills that gap by putting the indicator next to a reference and making the deviation visible. But a sound comparison starts with a sound calculation, and calculations most often stumble in the place nobody looks: the denominator.
The Three Core Service Quality Indicators
Interruption performance is read in the international literature largely through three indicators:
- SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index): Total customer interruption duration in a period divided by the total number of customers served. It answers "how many minutes was the average customer without power?"
- SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index): Total customer interruptions divided by total customers. It shows how many times the average customer was interrupted.
- CAIDI (Customer Average Interruption Duration Index): SAIDI divided by SAIFI. It describes how long an affected customer waits, on average, per interruption.
The three belong together. If SAIFI falls while CAIDI rises, interruptions may have become rarer but longer, which points less at the network itself and more at the fault response process. Management that watches only one indicator misses this kind of divergence.
Beyond Interruptions: Network and Cost Indicators
Service quality is not only about outage statistics. The physical condition of the network and how resources are used belong in the same picture:
- Fault density: The number of faults per given length of line — one of the fairest ways to compare regions with networks of very different sizes.
- Maintenance cost per km: Maintenance spend relative to network length, showing whether the maintenance budget is in proportion to the network.
- Staff per thousand customers, investment per customer and operating cost per customer: Ratios that make resource efficiency independent of scale.
What these indicators share is that they are all ratios. Raw values make a large region and a small one impossible to compare; ratios bring different scales onto common ground.
The Denominator Problem: Where Do Customer Counts Come From?
The most fragile part of any comparison is the denominator. SAIDI and SAIFI divide by the total number of customers, and so do the per-customer indicators. Interruption duration and counts are usually recorded in operational systems, but customer counts often live in a different system, updated on a different rhythm.
That split leads to a few typical errors:
- Period mismatch: January's interruptions divided by December's customer count.
- Scope mismatch: One province's outage data divided by the company-wide customer count.
- Silent assumptions: A denominator hard-coded somewhere and never updated for years.
The result looks mathematically correct but measures the wrong thing. That is why the denominator has to be at least as visible and auditable as the numerator, and explicitly defined by period and province.
The Three References of a Fair Comparison
For an indicator to mean something, three references are usually enough:
- Previous period: Shows the direction of travel. Are we improving or getting worse?
- Target: The bar the organization sets for itself. This comparison tells you whether investment and maintenance plans are actually working.
- Sector average: Shows how the organization looks from the outside, and makes it possible to ask whether the target is ambitious enough.
These references create value when they are read side by side, not one at a time. An indicator that improved on last period but still trails the target sends a very different message from one that hit its target but trails the sector average.
Choosing the Period and the Rhythm of Calculation
Monthly and annual values answer different questions. Monthly values are sensitive to seasonal effects and single events; they are ideal for early warning but misleading when read in isolation. Annual values show the structural trend and are the real basis for targets and strategic decisions.
When the calculation happens matters too. Hand-compiled spreadsheets are prepared once a month, usually right before the meeting. That raises the error rate, and by the time a deviation is spotted it has already built up. A regular, automatic calculation turns the indicator from a report into a value that is actually watched.
Whose Desk Does an Off-Target Indicator Land On?
However well a benchmark table is designed, somebody has to look at it. If an indicator that drifts off target does not reach the right person on its own, the table is little more than a passive archive. Notifications need restraint as well: alerts repeated every day for the same deviation quickly become noise that everyone ignores.
Conclusion: Benchmark Service Quality with GeoEner Business Intelligence
GeoEner Business Intelligence is a metrics and indicators module built into GeoEner. Data is not moved to a separate warehouse; outages, maintenance work orders, investment requests and network inventory are read directly from the source. The benchmark screen calculates 8 KPIs from internal data for monthly or annual periods: SAIDI, SAIFI, CAIDI, fault density (per 100 km), maintenance cost per km, staff per thousand customers, investment per customer and operating cost per customer.
The table shows value, previous period, change, target, sector average and status side by side. Denominators not produced in the system, such as customer counts, are entered by period and province on the Benchmark Context Values screen, and targets and sector averages are defined by the organization itself. KPIs are calculated automatically every night and can be re-run in one click. When an indicator goes off target, an in-app notification goes to the designated recipients, with no repeat notification for the same period.
If you would like to see how your service quality indicators compare with your own targets and references, using your own data, get in touch and let us plan a demo.
