When Jeff Luzenski looks back on his days as a child growing up in the Lehigh Valley, he can’t recall ever seeing an osprey or peregrine falcon flying overhead.
So the sight of ospreys on nesting platforms at various spots in Pennsylvania, and falcons feeding their young in center city Allentown, gives him a sense of pride.
Luzenski, a 34-year employee of PPL Electric Utilities, played a significant role in fostering the resurgence of both ospreys and falcons in the region. As a senior environmental professional, he is focused largely on protecting and improving the environment.
During the past 25 years, Luzenski has worked with many organizations and agencies, including Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and Wildlands Conservancy, to support osprey and peregrine falcon restoration efforts. During that time, a number of nesting platforms and boxes have been added at various locations in our service territory.
The idea of building nesting platforms is to give birds a safe place to nest and an alternative to other spots they sometimes select to nest, including the top of utility poles or towers. Those areas present some risk because of high-voltage lines.
Inside a nesting box on the 21st floor of our headquarters, three eggs being incubated by a pair of peregrine falcons hatched earlier this year. The birds are now flying and learning to hunt on their own.
Luzenski also helped lead the Lehigh Valley Peregrine Project, a community effort to release young peregrine falcons from the top of our Tower Building in center city Allentown, with the hopes that the falcons would come back to the area.
“You never saw that when I was a kid,” Luzenski said. “Now, routinely, I’ve seen bald eagles near my house, falcons and ospreys. Just getting a glimpse of one of those birds is something that everyone can enjoy and appreciate.”
The experience with both projects has helped Luzenski stay in tune with the changing environment, which is important in his role in helping to carry out PPL’s environmental stewardship.
“I like the outdoors, personally,” Luzenski said. “And doing what I do for PPL helps make sure everyone is doing the right thing and being environmentally responsible.
“It’s great to know that PPL played a role in helping these beautiful birds. We’ve brought together a lot of people to make a difference. It’s been very rewarding.”
You asked for more convenience. We’re delivering with new two-way texting. It makes doing business with PPL faster and easier than ever!
Paying your bill or reporting an outage is now as simple as sending a text message. You can also use two-way texting to find out when your bill is due and how much you owe, or to check the status of a current outage.
It’s easy to get started. Here’s how:
1. Text any of the following commands – PAY, BALANCE, OUTAGE or STATUS – to TXTPPL (898-775).
2. Answer a few questions to verify your PPL customer account. You will need your zip code and/or account number. If you don’t have a mobile number on your account, you’ll need to add the mobile number you want to use first as the primary or alternate number. To do this, visit pplelectric.com/contactinfo. Click Add Phone and save the changes.
To pay your bill, you must have a bank account on file. If you’ve ever paid through PPL’s website or interactive phone system, you should be good to go. If not, you’ll first need to make a payment on our website or phone system. We’ll securely save your bank info for text payments.
Once you’re set up, you can text PAY, BALANCE, OUTAGE or STATUS to TXTPPL (898-775) to pay your bill, check your balance, report an outage, or check the status of an outage.
You can also text SLEEP, to delay any new texts for eight hours, or STOP, to stop all future text messages from PPL.
We’re committed to making it as easy and convenient as possible to work with us. We hope you like our newest service.
Shown above: The Bloomsburg Fair following Hurricane Agnes, June 1972.
Hurricane season starts June 1 and continues into the fall. And while we might think of the warm tropics when we think of hurricanes, experience shows these storms can have a big, destructive impact here in Pennsylvania.
Here are six tips to help you ride out any storm:
1: Prepare an emergency kit. Or, if you made a kit years ago and haven’t checked it since, there’s no better time to update it. Kits should include bottled water; first-aid supplies; non-perishable food, pet supplies, and more. Visit our website for more info.
2: Make medical arrangements. If you rely on powered medical equipment, you should have a battery backup, a generator, or a firm plan of where you’d go for help in case of a sustained power outage.
3: Set your PPL Alerts. In the event of an outage, our alerts will keep you posted on estimated restoration times as they become available. You can get the info by phone, email, text, or any combination. Visit pplelectric.com/alerts to customize your alert preferences.
4. Be aware of the weather. Regularly check weather information so you’re aware of what’s in the forecast.
5. Have flashlights ready. Candles aren’t a great choice during outages because they create a fire risk. We recommend having a few flashlights on hand – and some spare batteries for them.
6. Do it now. This might be the most important tip of all. Take steps to prepare now, while the weather is clear. When a big storm is moving in, you’ll be thankful you did.
Drones are more than just an innovative way to patrol and review electric delivery lines. They can be an innovative tool to help string them, too.
At least twice in recent weeks, our employees have turned to the unmanned aerial vehicles as a way to help with challenging line restoration work.
During recovery from the March 2 nor’easter, crews used a drone to help with a difficult job in the Shohola, Pike County, area. Crews had to get a line through a 1,200-foot section of ravine, with a downed tree blocking the right of way.
Regional Design Supervisor Bill Farber remembered hearing that Regional Design Supervisor Phil Brant had used a drone to help string lines during restoration work in Puerto Rico. A drone was used there on three separate occasions to fly a pulling string across inaccessible areas ranging from 150 to 500 feet across. Crews were then able to use the string flown in by the drone to pull line across the inaccessible areas.
Just as he did in Puerto Rico, Brant used a drone to fly a piece of line across the 1,200-foot ravine, proving PPL can achieve flights of greater length with continued success.
While other methods can be used to pull string through inaccessible areas, drones offer a more controlled, precise and safe way to do so.
“Using drones for this purpose can save the company money and help us get lines rebuilt more quickly,” Farber said.
A drone also proved to be the right solution to a different weather-related challenge in the Harrisburg region.
In the Newport area, a single-phase line crosses Sherman Creek, which has an island in the middle. During the week of March 12, a tree on the island fell and took down the line.
The creek was too swollen for crews to wade across. So Field Supervisor Andy Breault reached out to Senior Engineer Tom Grosz, asking whether the drone used at the Lancaster Service Center might be usable.
The method was the same: Support Engineer Eric Resch attached a rope to the drone and flew it across the creek. The crew then used the rope to pull a new line across the creek. The drone flight took just 10 minutes for setup and five minutes to fly, Resch said.
“I flew the drone past the crew, and the rope dropped off the drone and pretty well landed right in their hands,” he said.
Of course, power line inspections continue to be the primary use for drones. But the aerial vehicles also are proving their worth in other ways.
Updated at 11 a.m. Friday (3/2): Today’s nor’easter with its high winds is causing a lot of damage throughout our service area, and more bad weather is to come. There are many individual repair locations, so some outages may be prolonged. We urge customers to prepare for that possibility.
We don’t yet have restoration times for specific locations but will provide that info when we can.
Hundreds of PPL employees and contractors are working to fight the effects of this storm. We’ll work as quickly and safely as we can to restore power and will keep you informed as the storm develops.
In the meantime, please stay safe. Stay clear of downed lines and report them ASAP to 1-800-DIAL-PPL. And report any outages at 1-800-DIAL-PPL or www.pplelectric.com/outage.
Our investments in our network have significantly reduced storm-related outages, while also making our grid more resilient and secure. A few examples:
Our innovative smart grid technology has restored power to more than 190,000 customers since it went live in early 2016. It has also reduced storm-related outages by 20 percent. The smart grid automatically senses a power outage and reroutes power around the damage, restoring service for many customers within minutes.
There was a 76 percent reduction in lightning-related outages on transmission lines from 2012-17 because of investments in lightning protection.
Tree-caused outages continue to decrease. Trees are the leading cause of storm-related outages. We clear trees along more than 10,000 miles of power lines each year, and we’ll continue this comprehensive work to keep reducing outages.
That said, severe weather — like 60-mph winds, ice storms, heavy snow or lightning — can still cause outages. Here are some storm tips to help you prepare and respond to any problems.
Before the storm hits, make sure your cell phones and other personal devices are fully charged.
Also, make sure your PPL Alerts are set up so you receive outage or other info when and how you want it. We’ll send you the latest updates by phone, email, text or all three. Setting your preferences is as simple as going to www.pplelectric.com/alerts. (You’ll need to have an online account with us.)
Report any outages by calling 1-800-DIAL-PPL (342-5775) or by visiting www.pplelectric.com/outage. Don’t assume someone else has reported the outage.
Stay away from any downed lines and always assume the line is still energized. Call us immediately at 1-800-DIAL-PPL to report the line and keep pets and kids away.
If you have to run a generator, make sure you run it outdoors in a well-ventilated area — never indoors or in a garage.
Use flashlights, not candles, to reduce fire risk.
More storm and outage safety and prep tips can be seen here.
