Pepco Continues Significant Reliability Improvements

Improved feeders had 39 percent fewer outages and 42 percent shorter outages

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Customers are seeing significant improvements in service reliability as Pepco continues its reliability improvement work. From 2011 to 2012, outages on feeders we worked on as part of the improvement plan decreased day to day by 39 percent, and on those that did have outages were 42 percent shorter.

“Every day we work for our customers, and our customers are seeing the results. We are doing a better job in meeting their expectations, but our work continues.”

“We continue to work steadfastly to improve service for our customers,” Thomas H. Graham, president, Pepco Region, said Thursday. “We are committed to investing in upgrading our system to make sure we can provide safe and reliable service day to day and during storms.”

Pepco began a strategic initiative in September 2010 to improve reliability including trimming trees and replacing underground cable and power lines that span thousands of miles. Since the start in Sept. 2010 thru Jan. 31, 2013, Pepco has:

• Trimmed more than 4,850 miles of trees along power lines in Maryland and about 850 miles in the District of Columbia. Pepco plans to trim another 1,225 miles in Maryland and the District between now and the end of the year. The company has award-winning arborists on staff who help ensure that the trees that are being trimmed in an environmentally friendly manner stay healthy.
• Renewed or replaced more than 650 miles of neighborhood underground electric cable in Maryland, 58 miles in the District and plans to do the same for another 200 miles between now and the end of 2013.
• Improved the service of feeder lines that bring power into neighborhoods with the poorest reliability by upgrading more than 115 distribution feeders in Maryland, 66 feeders in the District of Columbia, and plans to complete work on about 100 more this year in the region.
• We also continue to improve our Customer Care center, where we doubled the number of representatives who take customer calls to 80 and more than doubled the phone lines – from 300 to 644. We also have made arrangements to use outside customer service help during major outages. All Customer Care representatives and additional help have been retrained.

“Every day we work for our customers, and our customers are seeing the results. We are doing a better job in meeting their expectations, but our work continues.”

For more information about Pepco and for updates, visit www.pepco.com, www.facebook.com/PepcoConnect, and follow Pepco at www.twitter.com/PepcoConnect.

Pepco, a subsidiary of Pepco Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: POM), delivers safe, reliable and affordable electric service to more than 793,000 customers in Maryland and the District of Columbia.