The Public Utility Commission Thursday issued for comments a proposed policy statement on service outage response recovery and public notification guidelines and establishing a Critical Infrastructure Interdependency Working Group.

The Commission voted 5-0 to issue the matters for comment. Interested parties have 30 days to comment on the regulations. Instructions on how to file comments are contained in the Commission’s Order.

The proposed working group would be made up of jurisdictional electric distribution companies (EDCs), incumbent telephone, facilities-based competitive telephone, water, wastewater, and natural gas distribution utilities with 5,000 or more customers as well as non-jurisdictional stakeholders such as cable providers and wireless carriers.

One of the goals would be for parties to come to an understanding of their critical interdependencies and how to coordinate restoration of services where more than one party is affected in a geographic area.

The proposed policy statement proposes a additional preparation and response measures which set forth the suggested measures for Pennsylvania EDCs that were developed after review of the utilities’ storm response for Hurricanes Irene and Sandy.

The Commission is looking for input on if the policy statement should apply to other industries including water, wastewater, gas, and telephone.

The Commission also is seeking comments on the cost/benefit analysis regarding implementation of the policy statement by the EDCs, and potentially other industries, especially in regards to the proposed storm damage and outage prediction models.

For more information, visit the PUC’s website.  (Docket No. L-2013-2375551)

NewsClip: PPL Getting Ready For Next Major Storm

9/30/2013