Our mission is to provide safe and reliable electric service to power your lives. That’s why we’re always working on reliability efforts, like trimming trees and investing in stronger poles.
Recently, our crews in Monroe County completed a major project to relocate powerlines that were causing reliability issues. The lines ran through heavily wooded areas that were hard to access, making it difficult for us to restore power after storms.
We also added larger and more storm-resistant poles and a state-of-the-art device to help prevent outages.
We work every day to keep your electric bills as low as possible. But paying any bill — especially these days — isn’t fun. That’s why we want you to know what you get for your energy dollar.
Let’s start with one of the most important aspects of our jobs: providing reliable electric service. Our electric grid consists of thousands of miles of poles and wires that deliver electricity to your homes, as well as the state-of-the-art technologies that manage them. Every year, we invest in systems and activities to keep our grid on the leading edge so we can keep your lights on.
Here are just three examples of the many reliability initiatives underway throughout our 29-county service territory.
Vegetation Management
Fallen tree branches are the number one cause of storm-related power outages. That’s why our crews work hard to identify, trim and remove trees and tree limbs before they cause problems. Our maintenance program is designed so we can trim the right trees at the right times to prevent outages. We use data to identify the areas that have the highest probability of tree-related damage and act accordingly.
Smart Grid Investments
Back in the day, when there was an outage on one of our lines, most customers on that damaged line lost power. Now, thanks to an impressive combination of automated sensors and switches, coupled with an advanced software system, our grid can reroute power automatically to limit the number of customers impacted by an outage. Plus, the system can shorten outage duration. That means an outage that once could have lasted hours becomes a momentary blip. You might have to reset your digital clocks, but you won’t have to break out your flashlights.
Line Monitoring
Every day, we proactively monitor the thousands of miles of lines that deliver electricity to our Pennsylvania customers. We’re looking for trouble spots, equipment damage and any other issues that could cause you to lose power. We rely on our dedicated crew to identify and report issues, but for some of our assets we also use unique methods, like camera-equipped drones, to keep an eye out for problems. Drones capture images of lines and transformers. They do thermal imaging to catch hotspots that can signal future problems. They also improve our vegetation management program by measuring the distance from trees to power lines, allowing us to schedule trimming before it’s too late.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. To stay up to date on our reliability investments, follow us on social media.
There are more than 10,000 solar systems installed within our service area. With solar panels becoming more and more affordable, we know this is just the start.
In fact, the pace of new systems installed so far this year is already ahead of last year. And that’s a good thing!
Why? Because our grid is ready for more customers to produce power when the sun shines and the wind blows. Our grid is designed to help us effectively manage the flow of that new energy. Best of all, we’ve made it easy for you to apply to install systems that make power from the sun, or wind. Most applications get approval within a day.
Today’s power grid is vastly different than even a generation ago. We understand the importance of embracing the changing energy landscape which is shifting from a model that has existed since Thomas Edison.
Today, power is flowing in two directions — traditional power generation traveling to homes and businesses over transmission and distribution grids and power coming back onto the grid from end points like rooftop solar or wind turbines. By effectively managing that power flow we can help avoid more costly alternatives, like building new power lines or substations. That helps keep rates reasonable.
Considering installing solar or wind power where you live? Our state-of-the-art grid is ready to welcome you. We know you depend on us – and we deliver.
Visit our renewable energy page for the latest information.
Combine innovation with smart investment and good things happen.
In our case, a comprehensive installation of smart grid technology over recent years has allowed us to prevent more than 1.3 million customer outages since 2015. That’s a major milestone and one we believe can’t be equaled by any other electric utility in the country.
What is smart grid? It’s a combination of state-of-the-art automated sensors and switches, coupled with an advanced software system, that acts instantly to reroute power around a trouble location and reduce the outage footprint to the smallest possible area. Our lineworkers then respond to make the necessary repairs.
A million is a huge number, but what does it mean? We estimate that customers have avoided a total of 100 million minutes in the dark since 2015. That’s 190 years of time!
This achievement demonstrates how we’re using technology, innovation, and data to deliver more for you, our customers. It’s how we reliably power your home, business, and community each day. That’s peace of mind and value for your energy dollar.
We’re going to keep imagining, keep innovating and keep making our grid stronger, smarter, and more reliable and resilient. Here’s to the next million!
We’ve never been afraid to experiment with new technology or implement innovative ideas if it means more reliable service for our customers.
So as soon as battery technology became more advanced, our engineers were excited to launch a program within the PPL territory, specifically along a line in the Harrisburg region that experienced outages in the past.
These batteries, connected to the grid, will instantly kick-in when customers are out of power and can keep the lights on for 6 hours or more!
The Harrisburg battery project is the first of its kind on the PPL grid and we’re already looking into other regions that would benefit from this technology.
This innovative solution is a huge plus for power quality and reliability for our customers. And batteries are just the start of ensuring a safer, more reliable and resilient grid.
