Western Power Distribution

PPL Global owns two companies in the United Kingdom that collectively are known as Western Power Distribution. WPD South West and WPD South Wales are operated together to for maximum efficiency and profitability.

WPD South West delivers electricity to 1.5 million customers in a 5,560-square-mile area from Bristol to Bath, England. About 29,800 miles of wire make up the distribution network. PPL Global made its initial investment in WPD South West in 1996, when the utility was known as SWEB.

WPD South Wales serves an area of Wales opposite the Bristol Channel from WPD South West’s territory. WPD South Wales delivers electricity to 1.1 million customers in an area covering 4,550 square miles. About 20,400 miles of wire make up the distribution network.

WPD South Wales is the result of the acquisition in 2000 of Hyder, a holding company. Hyder’s water business and other assets were sold. The electricity distribution business, then known as Infralec, was retained and renamed WPD South Wales.

The acquisition of Hyder was a finalist for Financial Times Energy’s “Successful Investment Decision of the Year” award. In addition, securitization of Hyder’s water business was named “Financing Package of the Year,” “European Securitization of the Year” and “Sterling Bond of the Year” by International Financing Review.

The WPD companies have been transformed into efficient, low-overhead, customer-focused operations. The service territory is one of the most rural areas of the United Kingdom, yet it has the best reliability and the lowest level of customer complaints in the country.

WPD’s outstanding customer service and community responsibility initiatives have been honored with the following:

• The company earned the government’s Charter Mark award for outstanding customer service again in 2007. WPD has held the award continuously since it was started in 1992. No other electricity distribution company in the U.K. has ever earned the honor.
   
• The United Kingdom’s chief electricity regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, in 2006 awarded WPD nearly $1 million for exemplary service to vulnerable customers and for its social responsibility programs. It was the only company to be awarded for responsibility initiatives, and one of two awarded for work with vulnerable customers.
   
• WPD was honored in 2006 for meeting a rigorous asset management certification. The company is the first distribution network operator regulated by Ofgem to achieve the accreditation known as Publicly Available Specification 55 — a certification standard for asset management. The certificate from an independent risk management organization verifies that WPD has the processes and systems in place to make sure all of the company’s infrastructure; equipment; cables; and power lines, both overhead and underground, are working reliably for the customers’ benefit.

WPD is expanding its fiber-optic network to carry high-speed data and voice communications throughout southwest England and form a common-carrier backbone connecting trans-Atlantic cables to London.

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