In 2017, Delmarva Power customers in Delaware experienced the lowest average number of electric outages in the company’s history, as well as some of the fastest restoration times.
That was the word from parent company Pepco Holdings, a part of utility giant Exelon.
“Our employees work extremely hard every day to provide safe and reliable service for our customers,” said Dave Velazquez, CEO of Pepco Holdings, which oversees the operation of Delmarva Power. “These record results demonstrate the benefits of being part of the Exelon family of companies and sharing and implementing some of the best processes and procedures in our industry.”
The average number of outages decreased from the previous low, set in 2016, by 16 percent. When customers did experience an outage in Delaware, Delmarva Power restored power an average of four minutes faster than 2016. During the past five years, the number of electric outages has decreased by 35 percent and outage length has been reduced by 10 percent.
Over the last five years, Delmarva Power has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Delaware to modernize the local electric distribution system and enhance reliability for customers.
This work includes inspecting existing infrastructure, trimming trees that could potentially impact the system, building new substations, strengthening the transmission system, and installing stronger, tree-resistant aerial cable, a release stated.
The company also is using technology to improve system reliability, such as specialized equipment that can automatically restore service more quickly or isolate damage.
Reliability has improved to the point that Delaware regulators have questioned the cost-benefit ratio for some expenditures.
All of this is a far cry from 1999. At that time, Delmarva saw a major outage that led to an investigation and recommendations to continue the process of selling its power plants.
Delmarva, after acquiring two other utilities and operating for a time under the Conectiv name, was purchased by Washington-DC-based Pepco and more recently by Exelon, owner of BGE in Maryland and PECO in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Delmarva continues to share best practices with its Exelon sister utilities, Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd, PECO and Pepco, many of which also posted record reliability performances in 2017, a release noted.
