By Rich Heidorn Jr.
Despite a year that saw PJM cancel its 2022/23 capacity auction and part ways with its CEO, CFO and general counsel, 89% of members who responded to the RTO’s biennial stakeholder satisfaction survey said they are satisfied with its performance, officials told the Members Committee on Thursday.
“Given the complexities we experienced last year, I personally think this is a good result,” said Jim Gluck, director of member relations.
The score was down 3 percentage points from the results in 2017 and the second-lowest score PJM has recorded in the six surveys since 2010.
Some 626 people from 372 companies responded to the survey, which ran from Sept. 30 through Oct. 11.
2019 was perhaps the most tumultuous year in recent PJM history, with the departures of three long-time executives — CEO Andy Ott, CFO Suzanne Daugherty and General Counsel Vince Duane — in the wake of the GreenHat Energy default. The RTO also parted ways with Denise Foster, its popular vice president of state and member services. (See PJM Chooses CFO, Promotes Haque.)
The year also played out under the uncertainty of a pending PJM May Compress BRA Schedule over MOPR.)
CEO Manu Asthana, who joined in January, said he read all 1,100 comments submitted, which he said underscored “how important it is to improve the stakeholder process.”
“There are things we could be doing better,” he acknowledged. “We don’t get it 100% right.”
Still, he said, PJM’s 89% score is “higher than Apple’s net promoter score.”
The net promoter score — an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company to others — is a widely cited but controversial metric.
“This was not meant to be an apples-to-Apple comparison,” PJM spokeswoman Susan Buehler explained later. “The 89% overall satisfaction rating was based on the one high-level question we asked around PJM’s performance from members only. Manu simply meant to imply that a 89% is a high level of satisfaction even when looked at in the context of a leading consumer brand, but we continue to strive for even higher results.”
About 62% of PJM members rated the RTO as very or extremely good, and another 27% rated it good with 11% calling it fair or poor.
Nonmembers were less impressed, with 17% rating it fair or poor, up from 11% in 2017. Gluck said many of the nonmembers were agents and developers concerned about the transparency of PJM’s transmission planning.
However, Gluck said PJM’s ratings improved over 2017 on each of seven individual “dimensions”: core deliverables, integrity, communication, customer relationship management, change management, project management and impact.
For the first time, the survey provided respondents the option of asking PJM to contact them for additional feedback. About 100 people said they were interested in more dialogue. “Expect PJM to contact you in next month or so,” Gluck said.
