Working nonstop, PPL Electric Utilities restored electric service to about 210,000 customers this week — the second largest recovery effort in the company’s 83-year history.
"There was not a single part of our 29-county service area unaffected by storms this week," said Michael E. Bray, president of PPL Electric Utilities. "We want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding, and thank the many local organizations that worked with us to help people cope with the effects of power outages."
He also credited PPL Electric Utilities line crews and support personnel — as well as the electrical contractors, tree-trimming services and other utilities that provided skilled labor — who worked shifts of 16 hours or longer to make sure customers were back in service as quickly as possible. Service was restored Thursday (7/24) to the last of the customers affected by the storms.
Between Monday evening (7/21) and Thursday morning (7/24), crews completed 1,600 repair jobs: rebuilding power lines, replacing broken poles and damaged equipment, and resetting blown transformer fuses across a 10,000-square-mile area of eastern and central Pennsylvania.
Much of the damage was caused by the first line of severe storms, which contained gale-force wind gusts, a lot of lightning and even one confirmed tornado in northcentral Pennsylvania.
Complicating matters were the storms that continued to pop up in various places Tuesday (7/22) and Wednesday (7/23), resulting in additional outage reports.
"Our goal in any major storm is to get the greatest number of customers back in service in the shortest amount of time by working around the clock and prioritizing jobs effectively," Bray said.
More than half of the customers who experienced power outages because of the storms this week were back in service within four hours, he noted.
To help people who did have extended outages, PPL Electric Utilities made outreach phone calls to about 6,800 customers and arranged locations where they could pick up drinking water if they needed it and ice to help keep food from spoiling.
Because the wind and lightning caused damage over such a wide area, this week’s storms resulted in the second highest number of power outages in PPL’s history. Only Hurricane Floyd in 1999, which affected more than 390,000 customers and required nearly 4,000 repair jobs, was more damaging.
PPL Electric Utilities Corporation is a subsidiary of PPL Corporation. Headquartered in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) controls about 11,500 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets and delivers electricity to customers in Pennsylvania, the United Kingdom and Latin America.