PECO reported lowest rate of outages in company history last year

PECO, the Philadelphia Electric Co., posted the lowest rate of power outages in the company’s history last year.

The results showed that 86 percent of PECO customers experienced zero or one outage in 2023. And when outages did occur, the average time to restore power was just 90 minutes.

This record reliability is the result of the work PECO has done to modernize the electric grid and make it stronger, more weather-resistant and less vulnerable to storm damage. It is part of PECO’s $9.3 billion investment over the next five years to bolster its electric and natural gas systems. That includes investments in new equipment, inspections, vegetation management, and other measures to enhance and maintain systems.

“This is a major accomplishment for our company and for our customers. Our dedicated employees work so hard every day to prevent those outages that can be prevented and to provide our customers with the level of service they have come to expect from PECO,” Nicole LeVine, PECO senior vice president and COO, said. “We look forward to building on this milestone and our five-year system investment plan will help drive this effort.”

In 2023 alone, PECO completed more than 200 major electric reliability projects across southeastern Pennsylvania as part of its Reliability & Resiliency Plan.

PECO continues to explore new and innovative technologies to improve its reliability, including using drones to enable more efficient equipment inspections and faster damage assessments following storms, installing stronger poles and tree-resistant aerial cable, and installing reclosers that can automatically restore service or isolate storm damage.

Further, the company utilizes smart meters, which help confirm whether customers were restored during a storm, saving a crew from being dispatched unnecessarily. This work has helped improve reliability and reduce costs for customers by avoiding outages and increasing efficiency.