ALLENTOWN, Pa., Jan. 1, 2000---PP&L, Inc. confirmed early this morning that its 1.3 million delivery customers experienced no electricity service interruptions in the company's 29-county service territory in central and eastern Pennsylvania as a result of the Y2K changeover.
"Our people at PP&L took it as a personal challenge to ensure that Y2K did not interfere with the production and delivery of electricity," said Frank A. Long, executive vice president and chief operating officer. "We began our Y2K project more than three years ago. We've devoted more than 140,000 hours and about $14 million to our Y2K preparations over the past three years. All of that work certainly paid off tonight."
"Our employees work hard to make sure the lights go on, and stay on, every night of every year," Long said. "We owe a special thanks to the 550 extra PP&L employees who worked tonight to ensure continued reliable service to our customers. We also appreciate the fine work done by all the companies who supply PP&L with computers and other equipment and services. Their employees, like ours, worked diligently to eliminate any errors in their systems."
"Most importantly, I'd like to express our appreciation to our customers," Long said. "They endured some level of uncertainty as to whether there would be problems with their electricity. While we at PP&L were highly confident this would be a non-event, we couldn't guarantee, absolutely, positively, that there wouldn't be any problems."
In fact, PP&L had very few customer outages at all over the last 24 hours. The company has had only about 300 customers out of service since early yesterday. They were caused by auto accidents and some minor equipment failures that were unrelated to Y2K. This number is significantly lower than the company normally experiences on a winter day.
As of 12:30 a.m., there were no PP&L customers without power in the 29-county service territory, which is extremely rare for a winter night.
The Y2K changeover occurred without incident at any of the companies of PP&L, Inc.'s parent company, PP&L Resources. PP&L's electricity distribution companies in the United Kingdom, Chile and Bolivia all reported fewer than normal outages, unrelated to Y2K.
In addition, PP&L's natural gas delivery business, Penn Fuel Gas, also successfully made the transition to the Year 2000 without Y2K problems.
Based in Allentown, Pa., PP&L Resources is a Fortune 500 company that delivers electricity and natural gas to more than 1.3 million customers in Pennsylvania; sells wholesale and retail energy in more than 30 U.S. states and Canada; generates electricity at power plants in Pennsylvania and Maine; delivers electricity to 1.4 million customers in southwest Britain; and delivers electricity to more than 800,000 customers in Chile, Bolivia and El Salvador.