November 30, BY OVERNIGHT and ELECTRONIC MAIL

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1 November 30, 2009 BY OVERNIGHT and ELECTRONIC MAIL Mark D. Marini, Secretary Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities One South Station, 2 nd Floor Boston, MA RE: Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company Service Quality D.P.U Dear Secretary Marini: On behalf of Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil (the Company ) enclosed please find the Company s responses to the Department s 1 st set of information requests for filing in the above-referenced docket. Please note that the electronic spreadsheets provided as attachments to responses DPU 1-2, 1-3 and 1-4 are being provided in electronic format only by as well as on the enclosed disk. If you should have any questions or comments, please address them directly to this office. Thank you for your consideration in this matter. Sincerely, /s/ Gary Epler Gary Epler Attorney for Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company Gary Epler Chief Regulatory Counsel 6 Liberty Lane West Hampton, NH Phone: Fax: epler@unitil.com cc: Kate McKeever, Hearing Officer (three copies) Jed Nosal, Assistant Attorney General Tackey Chan, Assistant Attorney General Service List (by )

2 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil Docket No: D.P.U Department s First Set Information Requests DPU 1-1: Provide copies of pages 300 and 301 from the Company s FERC FORM 1 for calendar years 2006, 2007 and Response: Please see DPU 1-1 Attachment A. Person Responsible: Todd Bohan Date: November 30,

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9 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil Docket No: D.P.U Department s First Set Information Requests DPU 1-2: Please provide a table, in an electronic EXCEL spreadsheet (formulas included), that identifies all revenue components maintained on the Company s ledger, specifically, both a descriptive name and the associated annual revenues. Add as many other lines as appropriate. If necessary, add additional columns to the table below. Utilize the following format. Years: 2006, 2007 and 2008 Col #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 Account Total Distribution Revenue Transmission Revenue other (describe) Energy Supply Total Where the total line is equivalent to FERC FORM 1, page 300, line Response: Please see DPU 1-2 Attachment A. Person Responsible: Todd Bohan Date: November 30,

10 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil Docket No: D.P.U Department s First Set Information Requests DPU 1-3: Please complete all the fields in the Attached Excel spreadsheet (active electronic version only) for all Feeders/Circuits of the Company, for years 2006, 2007, and Expand the spreadsheet to include new circuits in the proper year. It is expected that the performance entered in this spreadsheet should corroborate the performance results filed in the Company s annual Service Quality filings, for the respective year. Response: Please see attached spreadsheet Person Responsible: John Bonazoli Date: November 30,

11 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil Docket No: D.P.U Department s First Set Information Requests DPU 1-4: Please complete the Attached Excel spreadsheet (active electronic version only) to include IEEE 1366 based information through year In addition, using a minimum of three years worth of data, provide the SAIDI and SAIFI calculations, values, and penalty/offset amounts that would have resulted had IEEE 1366 been employed. Response: Please see attached spreadsheet entitled DPU 1-4 Attachment A. Please note that the spreadsheet provided to Fitchburg Gas and Electric uses a formula to calculate the IEEE 1366 index factors using 3 years of data. This spreadsheet was completed as provided. In the past Fitchburg Gas and Electric used 5 years of data to generate the T MED factor. Using the historical period 2003 through 2005 for benchmarking, for calendar year 2007 there would be no penalty or offset for both SAIDI and SAIFI under the IEEE 1366 methodology. Person Responsible: John Bonazoli Date: November 30,

12 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil Docket No: D.P.U Department s First Set Information Requests DPU 1-5: Refer to the Company s revised (August 26, 2009) Service Quality Report, Section 2, at 7. Please explain why the Company is using only five years of historic data to calculate its benchmark for the Billing Adjustment measure when the Company has provided historic data since 1994 in past Service Quality Reports, including D.T.E./D.P.U Response: For service quality reporting done through calendar year 2006 (D.T.E./D.P.U ) the Billing Adjustment measure was based on the dollar amount per 1,000 residential customers. In D.T.E A, at 4-5, the Department changed this measure to the number of Billing Adjustments per 1,000 residential customers. On July 2, 2007, Unitil filed Revised Service Quality Plans for its Electric and Gas Divisions. 1 In its filings, Unitil stated that it does not have detailed data on the number of billing adjustments prior to Accordingly, only the years 2002 through 2006 are included. While Unitil does have dollar amounts for billing adjustments prior to 2002, it does not know the number of adjustments that comprise those dollar amounts. In order to have a consistent set of data based on the number of billing adjustments, data prior to 2002 was not included. Person Responsible: Mark Lambert Date: November 30, In its Order, D.T.E B, dated December 22, 2006, the Department directed the electric and gas distribution companies to file revised service quality plans with benchmarks in accordance with the Department's Guidelines. Unitil's Service Quality Plan for the Electric Division was approved by Order D.P.U , dated July 8, 2009; and Unitil's Service Quality Plan for the Gas Division was approved by Letter Order D.P.U , dated February 14,

13 Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil Docket No: D.P.U Department s First Set Information Requests DPU 1-6: Refer to the Company s revised (August 26, 2009) Service Quality Report, Section 2, at 8. Please explain in detail why the historic SAID/SAIFI data for the years 1996 through 2005 provided in the Company s 2006 SQ report (D.T.E./D.P.U ) is different from the SAIDI/SAIFI data for the years 1996 through 2005 in the Company s 2007 SQ report (D.P.U ). Response: The response in the D.T.E./D.P.U docket used the criteria specified in DPU These criteria excluded non-primary circuit outages from the reliability indices. The response filed under D.P.U used the more recent criteria and included all secondary outages. Therefore the reliability indices are slightly higher in the filing. Person Responsible: John Bonazoli Date: November 30,