In 2021, Berkeley Lab and Resource Innovations, Inc. launched the “ICE 2.0 Initiative” – a national study to refresh the underlying data and enhance the functionality of the ICE Calculator. The Initiative involves Berkeley Lab contracting with sponsoring utilities to administer identical, updated and comprehensive interruption cost surveys to statistically representative samples of each utility’s customers. Berkeley Lab and Resource Innovations then pool the survey results across the utilities and use them to update the analytical engines that drive the ICE Calculator. The ICE 2.0 Initiative is being conducted in phases. Each phase involves the administration of interruption cost surveys to the customers of sponsoring utilities, followed by an update to the ICE Calculator based on analysis of the pooled survey results.
This report describes the activities and findings from Phase 1 of the ICE 2.0 Initiative. Phase 1 was sponsored by eight utilities: American Electric Power, Commonwealth Edison, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, DTE Electric, Exelon, National Grid, and Puget Sound Energy. Phase 1 involved 11 customer interruption cost survey activities representing a total of 24 electricity distribution service territories, 23 of them located in the Eastern and Midwestern regions of the U.S. and one located in the Pacific Northwest.
ICE 2.0 vs. 1.0 Comparison
This memorandum compares customer power interruption costs estimated using the recently updated Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator (“ICE 2.0”) to the original ICE Calculator (“ICE 1.0”). ICE 1.0 was developed in 2009 based on 15 independent power interruption cost surveys conducted by 10 electric utilities between 1989 and 2012. ICE 2.0 was developed in 2025 through a national initiative based on a consistent set of power interruption cost surveys and 11 surveying efforts conducted across 24 electric utility service territories between 2022 and 2024.