A recent White House report touted increased investment in the nation's electric delivery grid as crucial to blunting the effects of severe weather - the number one cause of power outages in the country.
At PPL Electric Utilities, the focus always has been on safely and reliably delivering your power. We're in the midst of the largest investment in our system in a generation to make the system even more dependable.
The White House report - prepared by the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability and the White House Office of Science and Technology - sheds an interesting light on the damage Mother Nature can do.
The last two years, said the report, were the two highest on record for weather disasters with impacts of at least $1 billion. It noted data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show weather-related outages have increased significantly since 1992.
Hurricane Sandy last year was the worst storm in PPL Electric Utilities history, disrupting power to more than 500,000 of our 1.4 million customers.
The report talks about the age of the nation's grid, pointing out that 70 percent of transmission lines and transformers are more than 25 years old. To address aging infrastructure, we've been replacing some of our oldest transmission lines and are working now to upgrade others. Replacing older equipment and performing regular maintenance on power lines and substations are critical pieces of the reliability puzzle and it's something we take seriously.
We're installing more automated equipment on the system to detect problems sooner, alert operators of changing conditions, and reroute power more quickly. We're replacing thousands of older wooden poles that have reached the end of their lifespan and we're building new facilities to better withstand severe weather.
Another key part of reliability is keeping trees and other vegetation away from all of our lines, those that transport high voltages over long distances and those that carry lower voltages to homes and businesses. Trees are one of the most common causes of storm outages and those outages tend to impact more people and last longer.
Over a three-year period ending in 2012, crews cleared trees and other vegetation from the rights of way of all of our high-voltage power lines - 1,650 miles in all. It was a massive and much-needed effort.
Did it work? As if on cue, Mother Nature provided a major test. When Hurricane Sandy ripped through the region, causing widespread power outages from falling trees, not a single tree-related outage was reported on these lines
Now, similar clearing work is underway along another 2,750 miles of lower-voltage transmission lines. We're also clearing more trees around major distribution lines - all in the name of better service. We believe this work will prove beneficial with fewer outages during future storms.
The report notes the grid can't be totally immune to the effects of severe storms and suggests a "multi-dimensional" strategy. The use of newer technology will help us be much more responsive in the future.
A smarter, more resilient electric grid is one step that can be taken to ensure the welfare of millions of Americans, the report said.
At PPL Electric Utilities, we're already engaged in that work on behalf of you, our customers.
(Teri MacBride is regional community relations director for PPL Corp.)