Annual utility reports likely will exclude Irene data

HARRISBURG — More than 20,000 Pennsylvanians still were without power more than four days after Hurricane Irene passed over the eastern portion of the state, but months from now the difficulties of the past week could be withheld from reports on the power companies' performance.

The state Public Utility Commission, or PUC, which is charged with balancing the needs of consumers with the oversight of utility companies, requires electric companies to file annual public reports on their performance, including power outages.

But the commission allows companies to request waivers for data from certain time periods when outages were at high levels, such as in the wake of last week’s hurricane.

“They can be exempted from the annual assessments for an event like this, because it is somewhat unpredictable and severe,” said Jennifer Kocher, PUC spokeswoman. The waivers are typically granted for storms of this magnitude, but they are handled on a case-by-case basis.

Kocher said the PUC will file a separate evaluation of the utilities’ operation during and after the storm — including preparation for natural disasters — and make recommendations for the next time based on the findings. The evaluations of the storm response will be made public as well, Kocher said.

State Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton, said the commission should not exclude some data from its annual reports.

“What I worry about — and I’ve brought it up at some committee hearings — is that the PUC is looking out more for the companies than for the consumers,” Boscola said. “The data is there for someone who is watchful enough to look for it.”

Boscola said she wants to hold a hearing in the fall on the utilities’ preparation and response to the August storm, including input from the PUC on its assessments.

Even though the annual reports could end up showing only the sunny side of the utilities' operations, some observers said it made sense to differentiate between normal activities and emergency situations.

Grover Cleveland, emergency management coordinator for Barrett Township in Monroe County — one of the hardest hit spots in northeastern Pennsylvania where more than 500 customers were without power Thursday afternoon — agreed with keeping records of the storm separate from the state's other reports.

“If a tree falls on a power line, there is only so much that a company can do about that," Cleveland said. "If a power plant shuts down and the power goes out, that should be in the report."

The annual reports are meant for state-to-state or year-to-year comparisons, said Sonny Popowski, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate, an independent office within the Attorney General’s Office tasked with defending consumers before the PUC and other state and federal boards, commissions and courts.

"It's not so much good versus bad as it is normal versus abnormal,” Popowski said. “ … If you want to look year to year, those statistics would be meaningless, if you look at 2011 compared to 2010, when there wasn’t a hurricane."

As of Thursday afternoon, more 24,000 Pennsylvania residents were without power, down from more than 700,000 last Sunday. Almost all of the residents waiting for their lights to come back on are in the eastern part of the state, which is controlled by the PECO Energy Co. and the PPL Electric Utilities Corp.

PECO had 2,703 customers without power Thursday afternoon, according to the PUC.

Meanwhile, PPL had 8,300 without power, almost entirely in the rural parts of Monroe, Wayne and Pike counties in the Poconos, said Joe Nixon, PPL spokesman.

Nixon said PPL will ask for a PUC waiver for the days following the hurricane, as the company did following severe storms in late May. Karen Muldoon Gues, a PECO spokeswoman, was unsure if the company would request a waiver.

As of Thursday afternoon, Metropolitan Edison Co., which operates primarily in south-central Pennsylvania, had more than 10,000 customers without power.

When it comes to collecting data about the storm, the PUC will look at preparations made by the utility companies, including their inventory of equipment and staffing, restoration times compared with other historical storms, and the use of resources, said Kocher.

Cleveland and Boscola praised the companies for their responses to the storm, including PECO and PPL bringing in workers from out of state to help repair downed power lines.

But in some of the hardest hit parts of the state, local officials were more critical of the response.

In Delaware County, Larry Gentile, Haverford Township manager, said the response from PECO was slow in a town of 50,000 people where nearly 50 percent of households were without power following the storm. Gentile questioned whether the companies were prepared.

“I was driving all through my community on Monday, and I didn’t see a single PECO truck,” Gentile said. “What I’m told is that they were ready to go, but there is frustration in the community, because they didn’t see anyone.”

Muldoon Gues said PECO was adequately prepared for the storm, and would have power restored to all customers by the end of the day on Friday.

PUC is revamping its policies and guidelines for how utilities should handle large-scale power outages, with a focus on communication between the companies and people affected.

Click here for more on PPL and PECO data on hurricane-related power outages.