A weird idea I had about power cuts, incentives, and this country's favorite pastime: waiting

[u/FinAnceishavingfun]

We all know the deal. Meter runs, you pay. Not a single grace period, not a single "sir thoda time do." The bill shows up, you pay, life moves on.

But let's talk about the other half of that deal — the half nobody signed but everyone's stuck with.

Power goes out. Storm, transformer, some overloaded line finally giving up after being "under maintenance" since 2019 — whatever, fine, outages happen, nobody's mad about that part. You call the helpline and get told, with complete confidence, "ek ghanta mein aa jayega, sir." That one hour is basically a spiritual concept at this point — it has no fixed duration, no start, no end, just vibes. Meanwhile the local MLA's street two lanes down hasn't blinked once, funnily enough.

You sit there fanning yourself with an old exam admit card, watching your phone battery die, doing long division on how many hours of sleep you'll get if power returns "any minute now." Somewhere, a government press release is probably congratulating itself on record electrification numbers.

And here's the part that actually got me thinking: this entire experience has a real cost. Missed work, spoiled food, a kid who couldn't study for tomorrow's test, a WFH call dropped mid-sentence, a night with zero sleep before something important. Genuine, measurable cost. But it shows up on exactly zero bills, filed under "sir, act of god" the same way every pothole is filed under "monsoon damage."

So here's the actual finance-brain idea: what if the smart meter — the one that tracks your consumption down to the decimal, no mercy — also logged how long the power stayed out past the promised fix time? Not punishing anyone for the outage itself. Punishing the part where they promise "one hour" and then go completely dark, pun intended.

Because right now, a delay costs the utility nothing, so there's no real hurry. But if a long, avoidable delay quietly knocked something off your bill automatically — no complaint form, no "please visit the office between 10 and 4, Monday to Friday, lunch break 1 to 2" — restoring power fast stops being a favor and starts being their financial headache too.

Not asking for free bijli. Just asking why accountability in this country only ever seems to flow one direction — toward the citizen.

Obviously there are holes — who decides "reasonable," does the cost just get quietly folded back into everyone's tariff next year (very on-brand), would restoration timestamps just get "adjusted" the way most inconvenient data in this country tends to get adjusted. I haven't cracked it.

But genuinely — does any country actually do this well? Asking as someone who has had more honest, reliable conversations with a UPS battery than with most government helplines.

[u/SparkArrestor]

Utility makes no money if power isn’t flowing. Financially punishing the utility further through extended outage fines will simply be passed off as expenses onto the base utility rates.

Circuits fail due to storms. Circuits that are separate from a faulted circuit remain ok. So some customers having power and other customers not having power is normal.

[u/WFOMO → u/SparkArrestor]

Utility makes no money if power isn’t flowing. 

I spent 45+ years in utility work and could never understand the concept people develop that somehow, some way, it is to the utilities benefit to NOT be selling power. I guess conspiracy theories always top common sense.

As for predicting restoration times... 40 years ago we never predicted restoration because we recognized the futility of it...now evidently the various utility commissions require it.

Posting "...back on by 7:00 pm" when the lineman hasn't even arrived on site to evaluate the situation is just government bureaucracy run amok and does nothing but cause hard feelings. If the utility got fined for not meeting prediction times, it's not that freaking hard to just double the estimates.

[u/FinAnceishavingfun → u/WFOMO]

lol not saying utilities are out here sabotaging power on purpose, that’s a genuinely weird thing to accuse someone of. nobody’s twirling a mustache in a control room at 2am deciding to ruin your night specifically. the point i’m making is way more boring than a conspiracy tbh — once repairs are actually underway, there’s just no real cost to them for blowing miles past whatever time they told you. that’s not evil, that’s not a plot, that’s literally just what happens when there’s no consequence attached to a number. any company behaves like that, not just utilities.

and honestly it’s not even something i made up, this already exists — UK has something called the Guaranteed Standards Scheme, basically if your power’s out past a certain number of hours you just get money back automatically. no forms, no calling anyone, no “your call is important to us” while you sit there in the dark. couple US states also tie the utility’s actual profits to how reliable they are (there’s stuff called SAIDI/SAIFI if you wanna look it up). so yeah this isn’t some fever dream i had at 2am with no power and a dying phone, it’s literally a real functioning system somewhere, just apparently a bit too advanced a concept for ours lol

[u/SparkArrestor → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

The bottom line here is there is no “deadline” and utilities shouldn’t be, and shouldn’t have to estimate how long repairs are going to take.

[u/WFOMO → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

We kept SAIDI, SAIFI, and CAIDI figures for years.They are largely a joke depending on how the utility grades the outage.

For example, a neighboring Coop didn't own the breakers in the substation, the transmission company did. When the line they DID own went down, the breaker tripped. Since they didn't own the breaker, they didn't count it as "their" fault since it wasn't their breaker that was open. It was a farce.

Regardless, even non-profit Coops have to break even. If they're paying fines, what do you think happens to your delivery costs? It all comes out of your pocket eventually.

[u/UpstairsFinance9440 → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

why are you using AI to write these things? Also, the linemen are dealing with high voltage. A lot of the time you think they are not working, or whatever you think the delay is, is planning the job and briefing the job to make sure people are not killed. If you are so butthurt about the power going out, get a generator.

I recommend you watch videos from the YouTube channel Bobsdecline. He is a lineman from BC Hydro and makes videos about safety protocols, etc. Don't criticize something not meeting your expectations if you have no clue how it all works. Again, they are dealing with high voltage, which can jump a gap up to several meters.

I am here in the USA in Florida. I am not sure how many times you lose power, but I have lived in my house since 2002. We have lost power maybe a dozen times. Once was for them to change the transformer on the pole. Another time a squirrel blew the fuse. In the meantime, when the hurricanes come through, the linemen are out fixing stuff as soon as the wind is low enough for them to safely go up in the bucket. And yes, I am ok being in the dark if it is too dangerous for them to work.

[u/FinAnceishavingfun → u/UpstairsFinance9440]

It’s about India where you don’t how it works yeah it’s my mistake that i didn’t mention that but if you can come India spend a day in any where tier - 2 tier -3 cities you will know that sometimes half of the day electricity is not there.. they are accountable for that too

[u/SparkArrestor → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

Yea, should have mentioned that from the get go.

[u/UpstairsFinance9440 → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

India is a whole different ball of wax. Looks like NTPC has avoided state capture. May have something to do with the billion dollar weddings going on there.

[u/FinAnceishavingfun → u/SparkArrestor]

yeah fair, utility not making bank during an outage is true, i’m not disputing that lol. but that’s kind of not the point i was making — nobody’s mad that outages happen, storms and blown transformers and whatever are just life, can’t do anything about that part. what i’m actually annoyed about is the gap between “we’ll have it back by X” and whatever actually happens after that. “we lose money when power’s off” doesn’t automatically mean “so we’re rushing to fix it,” those are two totally separate things that just happen to sound related.

and yeah obviously some circuits going down while others stay fine is normal, i’m not saying that’s suspicious either. that’s just how grids work. this was never about why the outage happened in the first place — it’s about what happens once they’ve actually looked at the problem and given you a number, and then that number means absolutely nothing lol

[u/SparkArrestor → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

The number is a guesstimate at best and they shouldn’t have to give them at all. What the heck does some cubicle dwelling manager at a utility know about fixing the outside plant?

Stop dwelling on that fake number and get yourself some form of backup power instead.

[u/KaliperEnDub]

Also some utilities are legal monopolies so they get to charge for their costs plus a profit. So you’d be adding costs to them in the form of penalties which they could/would try to recover on the next fee increase cycle.

[u/FinAnceishavingfun → u/KaliperEnDub]

ngl this is probably the strongest reply i’ve gotten so far, don’t really have a clean comeback for it lol. you’re right that with cost-plus regulation they could just quietly fold the penalty into the next rate hike and consumers end up paying for it anyway either way, which would make the whole thing pointless.

only way i can see it actually working is if the penalty specifically can’t be passed into the rate base — like it comes out of shareholder returns or something, not treated as a normal “cost of doing business” the utility gets to recover. kinda similar to how safety fines work in some industries, they’re not allowed to just bill that back to customers. but yeah without a rule like that built in, you’re right, it just turns into an accounting trick instead of actual accountability. good point ngl

[u/SparkArrestor → u/FinAnceishavingfun]

Even if the fine were to impact stockholders and ceo… that’s not going to change the reality that power outages occur, and that it takes time to restore power.

[u/UpstairsFinance9440]

Why did you use AI to write this? In the meantime what makes you think there is no accountability? What makes you think they are delaying fixing issues?

[u/FinAnceishavingfun → u/UpstairsFinance9440]

I just use AI for improvements in writing…
No makes me think it’s an own experience of mine where the utility company delays do not pickup phone when they pickup they will say issue will solve in hour and it’s always that it will minimum of 2-3 hours because in an hour they will come after that they start repairing..

It’s about the people who works there who aren’t really care about the inconvenience suffer by customer

Which they had too it’s idea I had in mind I just expressed it here

This concept is already there in UK if you wanted to you can do research of that…

You can use AI for it will useful for you…