By Kurt W. Blumenau, PPL Electric Utilities

PPL Electric Utilities’ experience in several major storms this year has shown that timely preparation, customer focus and strong supporting technology are keys to effective storm response.

When the utility first received word of a potentially damaging pre-Halloween snowstorm moving toward its 29-county service area, it found itself in familiar territory. PPL Electric, which serves 1.4 million customers in central and eastern Pennsylvania, had already responded to three major storms this year alone. Damaging thunderstorms before Memorial Day, Hurricane Irene in August and Tropical Storm Lee in September all prompted the utility to extensively prepare and quickly respond to significant challenges and customer needs.

The lessons learned from those storms helped PPL Electric respond as smoothly as possible to what turned out to be one of the three worst storms of the past 20 years in terms of customer outages. The company appreciates the work of its field crews, the contributions of contractors and the patience and persistence of customers during the October snowstorm and throughout this turbulent year. 

As in prior storms, PPL Electric Utilities prepared for the October snowstorm by ensuring the availability of crews, both internally and from its contractors of choice. These are outside companies that regularly work with PPL Electric and are familiar with the company’s network and geographical area.

PPL Electric Utilities also reached out to its sister utilities in Kentucky, just as it had during Hurricane Irene. Crews and contractors from Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities were among the first on the scene to help. LG&E and KU were acquired last year by PPL Electric Utilities’ parent company, PPL Corporation.

Finally, the utility arranged for necessary materials and equipment, as well as extra staffing in a variety of support areas, such as customer contact representatives, system dispatchers, field assessors and material handlers.

All of these resources and more would prove to be needed in the response effort, as PPL Electric Utilities’ service area ended up in the bulls-eye of the storm. Eight to 13 inches of heavy, wet snow were reported Sunday in parts of the utility’s service area. That snow, falling on trees that still had their leaves, caused extensive damage to transmission and distribution lines as broken limbs and branches contacted wires and poles. In some places, the single day’s storm broke snowfall records for the entire month of October.

Nearly 390,000 customers were left without service, and PPL Electric Utilities faced more than 3,000 individual repair jobs. Some of those jobs required extensive cleanup before crews could even start on the electrical repair work. Dave DeCampli, president of PPL Electric Utilities, called the damage some of the worst he’s seen in more than 30 years in the utility business.

As PPL Electric Utilities deployed its initial resources, it immediately began looking for additional crews to help it repair the extensive storm damage. Over the course of the storm, the company received help from four other utilities and 16 contracting companies from 10 states.

PPL Electric Utilities arranged with vendors to make free ice, water and coffee available to customers in especially hard-hit areas. The company also reached out to customers with rounds of personal phone calls in the final few days of the restoration process. And, customer outreach representatives made door-to-door visits to affected customers in areas with concentrated damage.

PPL Electric Utilities worked throughout the storm to provide daily updates to state and local officials in affected areas, as well as to hear those officials’ input on high-priority jobs in their areas. 

It also used new media more extensively than ever, posting coordinated messages and updates on Twitter and Facebook and interacting with customers. Regularly updated outage information was also posted on PPL Electric’s online Outage Center, along with information on where to find ice, water and coffee vendors.

Many Twitter customers thanked the utility throughout the storm for information, updates and contact through social media. The company’s Twitter account, @pplelectric, rose from 1,500 followers at the start of the storm to 2,300 followers by the end.

Other forms of customer contact stand out as areas in which PPL Electric Utilities can improve its storm response. The utility’s customer contact system was overloaded by calls during the peak of storm outages on Sunday, and customers struggled to get through to report outages. More than 1.2 million calls to the company were reported during both Hurricane Irene and the snowstorm.

Also, many customers received automated estimated restoration times that offered confusing, sometimes inaccurate information on when power would be restored in their area.

DeCampli has pledged that PPL Electric Utilities will make necessary upgrades to make it easier for customers to reach the company, as well as to provide more accurate and consistent restoration information. Plans are being developed to expand the call center’s telephone capacity and upgrade the IVR system to better meet customer needs to report outages and get ERTs

PPL’s External Affairs team worked to pair television and print reporters with crews working in the field as much as possible. The coverage produced by this strategy showed viewers and readers just how severe the damage in the field was, and helped them understand why the customer restoration process was continuing into the week.

Some 540 tree and line crews worked around the clock to restore power over five to six days. In all field work, the company applied its standard prioritization policy. Public health and safety facilities, such as hospitals, received top priority for restoration along with transmission lines. After those facilities were back online, the company gave priority to larger repair jobs that would restore the most customers to power as quickly as possible.

The utility’s bulked-up workforce was able to bring the vast majority of affected customers back to service within 48 hours. However, the last and smallest outages lingered until overnight Thursday into Friday.