Americans say: You can't pay me to tolerate a power outage

People don't like power outages. No surprise to anyone here. What may be surprising is the number of American's that are not willing to tolerate disruption even for some handy compensation.

More than one-quarter of the American public believes they should never experience an electric power outage, unless there is an extreme weather event, according to the findings from the first Reliability Demand Survey (RDS) -- a national opinion survey of more than 500 Americans jointly sponsored by Build Energy America and Potomac Communications Group conducted by YouGov Definitive Insights.

Astonishingly, 33 percent of Americans wouldn't tolerate a two-day power outage, even if they were paid $1,000 to do so. Even more astonishing is that customers will pay the utility to minimize outages -- 45 percent would pay their utility $10, $20 or $40 per month more if power outages could be kept to four hours or less.

The survey revealed that the biggest problems experienced even from brief outages include -- in order of importance -- loss of air conditioning, refrigeration and heat followed by mobile devices, entertainment and digital data.

The big picture survey results reveal that utilities and regulators are under increasing pressure to make sure that current reliability levels do not deviate downward, as Americans cannot and will not tolerate power outages, especially those lasting two days or longer.

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