The Public Utility Commission Tuesday released its report providing detailed information about and action items related to Hurricane Sandy.

“In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the story we have to tell is in large part a positive one, with hundreds of thousands of customers having their power restored within 72 hours,” said PUC Vice Chairman John F. Coleman today in testimony before the Senate Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee.  “However, we are aware that many others were left without electric service for up to 10 days.  We are pleased that many of the experiences from the severe-storm related outages of 2011 were incorporated into this response, which brought positive results. The process of building on what worked and changing what didn’t is well underway at both the PUC and the utilities.”

The report contains information on actions taken by the PUC and utilities as well as ongoing steps. The report also makes recommendations to the electric distribution companies (EDCs) to address many concerns. The report also compiles and analyzes EDC data; examines complaints about the inability of customers to contact the EDC to report outages; and reviews a lack of specific restoration information.

In reviewing the utility response as a whole, we found that many of the lessons from storms in late 2011 were indeed learned:

-- A majority of the affected EDCs successfully used both social and more traditional media to communicate with customers before and during the effects of Sandy.

-- All EDCs communicated more effectively with elected officials, county emergency management, and local emergency management than they did in the response to Hurricane Irene and the other major storms in 2011.

-- The utility staffing of county 911 and emergency operations centers with EDC liaisons was extremely useful and should be continued.

-- Utilities that experienced longer-duration outages had some difficulty in managing the estimated times of restoration (ETRs) for customers and communicating effectively with the local responders and elected officials in those areas.

-- EDCs experienced far less issues with handling peak call volume during Sandy as compared to their performance during the 2011 storms.

-- EDCs were able to bring in mutual aid and contractor assistance before the storm and during the restoration period.  Many EDCs substantially increased their linemen work complements.

The PUC offered the following recommendations as the state and its EDCs prepare for the next major event:

-- Social and traditional media outlets should continue to be used to communicate to customers before, during and after major storms.  EDCs also should continue to enhance their web and mobile platforms, providing customers additional methods to report outages and to obtain outage status information, and incorporating any emerging technologies.

-- EDCs should work together on a best practice for managing ETRs, especially during long-duration outages.

-- EDCs should continue to improve communications and restoration messaging with customers during long-duration outages, working to prevent inconsistencies and inaccuracies when providing information to customers.

-- EDCs should continue their cooperation and communication with county 911 centers and emergency management agencies (EMA) by continuing to offer liaisons to counties during major outages and meeting with county 911 and EMA staff annually to ensure contact information is up to date and to review response expectations.

-- EDCs should continue to offer regional conference calls for state and local elected officials, and local emergency managers, which should begin before the storm impacts the area and continue throughout the restoration process.

-- EDCs should continue to lower the number of busy out calls and abandoned calls customers experience during storm events.

Sandy brought tropical storm winds and heavy rain to the eastern third of Pennsylvania as well as high winds throughout the center of the state.  Sandy began affecting southeastern Pennsylvania in the morning and early afternoon of October 29, 2012. The high winds and rain continued northwestward overnight. 

The wind and rain caused more than 1.26 million electric customer outages at the peak at approximately 4 a.m. October 30.  Approximately 1.79 million Pennsylvania electric customers experienced an outage at some point as a result of Sandy.

A copy of the report is available online.

5/13/2013