[May 24, 2012] PPL urges residents to prepare for outages Tweet May 24, 2012 (The Sentinel - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- The National Weather Service is calling for some unpredictable weather with isolated thunderstorms in the next few days, and it's reminding PPL Electric Utilities of last year's arrival of damaging thunderstorms. The storms around this time last year signaled the start of a stormy summer and fall throughout PPL's service area in eastern and central Pennsylvania, according to a release from PPL. Though the company hopes the summer weather won't be as severe, it still reminds customers what they should do before and during an outage. "With last year's storms still fresh for us, we want our customers to be as prepared as possible for the storms ahead this year. We've seen that disruptive weather can develop at any time," said Diane Coffin, manager of emergency preparedness for PPL. PPL asked its customers to report any outage by calling 1-800-DIAL-PPL (1-800-342-5775) or by visiting PPL Electric Utilities' online Outage Center at www.pplelectric.com/outage. Since last year, the Outage Center was upgraded to include a mobile format so outages can be reported on a smartphone, though customers need to register their account in advance. Steps that PPL suggests residents should take to be ready for a storm is to prepare a storm kit for outages that last more than a few hours and make a plan for families with elderly, small children and people with special personal needs. PPL said last year's storms included two that ranked among the utility's 10 worst ever in terms of impact on customers. The storm season began on the Thursday prior to Memorial Day, when a series of strong thunderstorms knocked out power to almost 182,500 customers. Restoration work continued through the holiday weekend, with the western parts of PPL Electric Utilities' service area being the hardest hit. Other significant storm events affecting PPL Electric Utilities' service area last year included Hurricane Irene in late August and September; Tropical Storm Lee in September; and the October snowstorm. Since those outages, PPL has made some improvements to its storm response processes and customer communications. PPL introduced My PPLAlerts, which sends updates free of charge to a customer's home phone, mobile device or email account when an outage affects the account. Alerts can also be sent when unusual outages are reported in the area, when a customer has exceeded a certain amount on the monthly bill or when PPL's Price to Compare changes. PPL also rolled out a new mobile website that makes it easier for customers to use their smartphones or other mobile devices to access PPL's Outage Center. The company also reviewed and revised its storm response procedures to improve the estimated restoration times it issues to customers, and it increased the number of phone lines serving its customer contact center by 20 percent. PPL plans to make $664 million in capital investments this year to its transmission and distribution system throughout its service area. The improvements will strengthen reliability, replace aging equipment and improve service to customers in all weather conditions. ___ (c)2012 The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.) Visit The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.) at www.cumberlink.com Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]