PECO customers experienced enhanced reliability this summer amid excessive heat

PHILADELPHIA (October 19, 2022) — As hot summer days are replaced by cooler autumn weather, PECO takes inventory of the company's summer performance. All summer long, PECO employees were hard at work to ensure the company's critical electrical infrastructure was prepared to handle increased demand and summer storms.

Since May, southeastern Pennsylvania experienced 16 days of storm weather and 48 days of extreme heat, including five heat waves. Through the heat and severe weather, PECO customers experienced enhanced reliability, with less frequent and shorter outages than in the last three years. When outages could not be prevented, the company's dedicated field crews were able to restore service quickly and safely to impacted customers.

This success is attributed to the company's increased infrastructure investment in new equipment and inspections, targeted infrastructure enhancements and corrective maintenance, and vegetation management work. This also includes PECO's Reliability & Resiliency Plan, which outlines the investment of $1.36 billion on targeted reliability-focused electric system infrastructure investments through 2025. 

"Our customers are the focus of everything we do, which is why we're prioritizing these strategic investments to strengthen our energy infrastructure, especially during extreme heat and severe weather, and to pave the way for clean energy resources," said Brian Crowe, PECO's Vice President of Technical Services. "The work of our dedicated field employees to modernize our energy infrastructure is critical to meeting the needs of hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers across southeastern Pennsylvania."

PECO's ongoing investments remain critical to ensuring reliable and resilient service for customers in the face of intensifying severe weather, which continues to increase and become more frequent. During the past 10 years, PECO has experienced 6 of the 10 most damaging storms in the company's history.

The company also continues to explore innovative technologies to help improve reliability for customers. This includes 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. Since May, reclosers have saved 580,864 customer interruptions, and during the past five years, these reclosers have avoided approximately 4.6 million customer interruptions.

As temperatures start to dip and we move into the winter months, PECO will continue work to ensure the company's natural gas and electric systems are ready to meet the energy needs of customers all winter long.

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