PECO's increased electric infrastructure investments result in fewer outages and faster restoration times for customers

PHILADELPHIA (February 16, 2023) — PECO's significant infrastructure investments and use of innovative technologies helped the company keep the lights on for customers, resulting in record-breaking reliability performance. In 2022, PECO customers experienced the fewest number of power outages in company history, 12 percent lower than the previous year, and even when service was interrupted, crews were able to safely restore power in 89 minutes, on average. Eighty-seven percent of PECO customers experienced zero or one interruption in service in 2022.

PECO continues to modernize the electric grid and make it stronger, more weather-resistant and less vulnerable to storm damage and is applying advanced technologies that will automatically restore service more quickly and isolate damage, helping to reduce outages and enhance service for customers.

"During the past decade, PECO has experienced some of its most damaging storms in our company's history, and with storms increasing in intensity, our year-round infrastructure investment efforts are now more critical than ever," said Nicole LeVine, PECO senior vice president and COO. "We have strategically implemented a series of reliability-focused projects and processes to help prevent customer outages, modernize the electric grid, and reduce the impact of extreme weather to keep the lights on for our customers. We're proud of these efforts to deliver enhanced reliability to our customers and are continuously focused on delivering even better results in the future."  

PECO continues to explore innovative technologies, which include using drones to enable more efficient equipment inspections and faster damage assessments following storms, installing stronger poles and tree-resistant aerial cable, and installing specialized equipment, known as reclosers, that can automatically restore service or isolate storm damage. This work has helped improve reliability and reduce costs for customers by avoiding outages and increasing efficiency in identifying and restoring outages that cannot be avoided. In 2022 alone, PECO completed more than 430 electric reliability projects across different counties in southeastern Pennsylvania as part of PECO's Reliability & Resiliency Plan, which outlines investments to make the company's energy infrastructure more resilient in the face of intensifying weather patterns and to enable clean energy resources.

These efforts ladder up to PECO's investment of approximately $7.8 billion during the next five years across its electric and natural gas systems to inspect equipment, complete targeted system enhancements and corrective maintenance, invest in new equipment, and perform vegetation management. 

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