Kennett Township supervisor blasts PECO for unreliable power service
07/09/2025 07:42AM ● By Richard Gaw
By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer
As the July 2 Kennett Township Board of Supervisors’ meeting was coming to a close, supervisor Geoffrey Gamble took the collective anger and frustration of thousands of area PECO customers on his back in a commentary that excoriated the power company and its leadership for the increasingly high amount of power outages that have been experienced in the township and surrounding municipalities.
“I have said this before, but it is worth repeating,” Gamble said. “There is a public safety concern here. When the power goes out, many of us in the western portion of the township have no TV, no landline service and no cellphone service because there is no WiFi. We have senior citizens who rely on consistent power to run life-saving medical equipment. If a fire or medical emergency were to occur – or we needed to call the police – there is no way to do so. Even to report an electrical outage, I have to go to Delaware – to Hockessin – to get a connection. This is unacceptable.
In his remarks, Gamble, whose home sits on the western edge of the township near the Delaware state line, said that in the 40 years he and his family have lived in their home, “we have lost electricity 290 times. This past June alone, we lost power 14 times, and in fact, yesterday, July 1, we lost it again.”
Gamble prefaced his comments by saying that the frequent power outages in southern Chester County are not the fault of the PECO technicians, but that the company’s leadership is to blame, specifically naming Exelon Executive Vice President and COO Michael A. Innocenzo and PECO President and CEO David Vahos.
Innocenzo, a former president and CEO of PECO, is responsible for governance and operations of Exelon’s six utilities, of which PECO is one. Vahos is responsible for PECO’s overall performance associated with operations, safety, service reliability, customer satisfaction and financial management, and oversees the delivery of energy to nearly 1.7 million electric customers and more than 550,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania.
‘Committed to providing safe and reliable energy’
The number of power outages occurring in southern Chester County of late have been exacerbated by a weather pattern that has left severe damage in its wake. On June 19, severe thunderstorms swept through the area, bringing gusts of up to 70 miles an hour and several tornado warnings that led to downed trees and toppled utility poles.
On June 20, PECO reported that nearly 41,000 of its Chester County customers were affected by the storm, as well as 72,000 customers in Delaware County, 72,000 customers in Bucks County and 70,000 customers in Montgomery County. In total, PECO reported that 275,000 homes lost power during the height of the storm.
In a press release issued on June 19, PECO wrote that was “committed to providing safe and reliable energy and has been hard at work to ensure the company's critical electric infrastructure is prepared to handle increased customer energy demands.” The press release said that the company is investing approximately $9.3 billion across its electric and natural gas systems to complete targeted infrastructure enhancements and corrective maintenance, invest in new equipment, inspect existing equipment, and perform vegetation management work. In addition, its stated that PECO was investing $1.36 billion in its Reliability & Resilience Plan, which provides for infrastructure improvements through this year.
‘We have a veritable forest of decrepit telephone poles’
Gamble called for the support of PA House Bill 825 – currently included in the 2025-26 House session – that looks to amend Title 66 (Public Utilities) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes in order to provide double utility poles throughout the state. He said there should be continued statewide support for the inclusion of underground technology.
“The Commonwealth never should have allowed telephone companies to discontinue support for rotary landlines, where the electricity was carried through the phone itself, until there was an adequate substitute in place,” he said. “In addition to the state’s primary responsibility to safeguard the safety and welfare of its citizens, it has an additional obligation – to sort out and coordinate various discordant communication entities doing business within the Commonwealth.
“At present, we have a veritable forest of decrepit telephone poles festooning the roads of our township. Some are overloaded, and many others are new with no wires attached to them. PECO, Verizon, Xfinity all blame each other.”
Gamble then recommended that the township take three actions:
Appoint a PECO-designated coordinator for the township, who would be given the responsibility to appear regularly at public meetings, provide updates and answer questions posed by residents;
Direct township Solicitor David O. Sander to explore the possibility of initiating a class action lawsuit on behalf of the township and perhaps surrounding municipalities to subpoena Innocenzo, Vahos and Brian Gove, PECO’s vice president of technical operations, to present the company’s records regarding the history of service and maintenance to the township and require the company to provide service upgrades, and sue them for an amount of money that would be equal to the cost of supplying generators for every home in the township that does not already own one; and
Have the township file a formal complaint to the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) about PECO’s inadequate service and encourage the PUC to explore the idea of licensing alternative electric companies to provide service to the township and surrounding communities.
“I think we need to do something,” Gamble urged his fellow supervisors Richard Leff and Patricia Muller.” We can’t just roll around with this and say that it’s a fact of life that in Pennsylvania we do not have adequate power.
“The ultimate goal is to get some transparency. These people at PECO are masters of obfuscation It’s impossible to reach them, even in a non-crisis mode, and when you get them, they promise things and they do not deliver, and that is not acceptable behavior.”
‘A groundswell of outrage’
Referring to Gamble’s comments, Muller said that for the residents of southern Chester County who are continually beset with power outages, it becomes not only a safety issue, but an economic concern rooted in connectivity.
“The way we work has changed,” she said. “It is no longer, ‘Well, I’ll just run into Hockessin and take care of the problem.’ It is part of doing business and it has had an economic impact on the township, and if we become that place where no one wants to live in because we have third world communication, then that’s a problem.”
The supervisors agreed that they will first focus their energies on seeking solutions for township residents but will consider partnering with neighboring municipalities and entities in the future.
“Since it is a matter of public safety in the mater of fire and emergency management services, I’d like to see this taken up with the Kennett Area Fire and EMS Commission, and the five townships that belong to it,” Gamble said.
“While having numbers behind us is the way to get attention, but rather than wait for a consensus from multiple municipalities, if we can create the template for activating our residents, we can then share that template with other municipalities and see if they want to participate in their own way,” Muller said. “This will be about creating a groundswell of outrage.”
To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].
