Most utilities treat an outage as an embarrassment to be explained later. The grid operator in Port Halden now treats it as a record to be published within twenty-four hours: what failed, where, for how long and what is being changed.
The reports are short and unvarnished. A fallen branch is called a fallen branch. A software fault is called a software fault, with the version number. Engineers say writing in plain language has made them think harder about root causes.
The surprise has been public trust. Complaints about outages are down, though the outages themselves are not. Customers, it seems, forgive failure more readily than silence.
Other operators are watching. A regulator has asked whether the format could become a standard, and two neighbouring utilities have asked to borrow the template. The cost, according to the operator, is about two hours of an engineer’s time per incident: a modest price for a measurable gain in credibility.
