State Public Utility Commission releases annual scorecard on power company outages

Pennsylvania’s power grid is faltering more than ever.

The state saw 71 significant power outages last year, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said in its annual reliability report, pushing a decades-long trend of rising service disruptions to new heights.

About 2.9 million customers faced outages, which was the highest number since 2011.

Every sizable outage was caused by severe weather. But that does not “excuse a slip in reliability performance,” the commission said in its report.

By and large, the utilities failed to meet the commission’s benchmarks.

Duquesne Light, serving more than 600,000 customers across Allegheny and Beaver counties, was commended for its “excellent” record of keeping outages few and far between. This is a problem area for most other utilities, the commission noted.

But the company was urged to reduce the duration of these outages. Duquesne Light customers waited an average of 156 minutes to have their power restored, which was longer than the 110 minutes measured in 2023.

West Penn Power, with upwards of 700,000 customers in the Alle-Kiski Valley portion of Allegheny County, along with Westmoreland, Butler, Armstrong and other counties, was criticized for both its number of outages and their duration. It nonetheless made strides in getting customers back online quickly, going from 266 minutes in 2023 to 200 minutes last year.

“It is recommended that West Penn utilize increased efforts in vegetation management and on improving outage response times,” the commission said.

Utilities weren’t docked for “major events,” defined as service interruptions resulting from conditions beyond their control and affecting at least 10% of their customers. The storms that slammed the region this April and cut off power for more than 400,000 people in Southwestern Pennsylvania would be one example.

Trees, and especially trees outside its right of way, were described in the report as a chronic problem for utilities. Companies should be working with property owners to trim or take down potentially problematic trees, the commission said.

The Public Utility Commission oversees electric, gas, water and other utilities within the state. It started issuing an annual reliability report for electric companies in 1994.