By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

The recent wave of criticism of the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) for its lack of consistent energy service in southern Chester County reached a high point on July 2 when Kennett Township Supervisor Geoffrey Gamble leveled the energy provider with a knockout blow of criticism and firm recommendations.

In the days that have followed the Chester County Press’ article, “Kennett Township supervisor blasts PECO for unreliable power service” that appeared in its July 9 edition, the groundswell of support for Gamble’s comments and individual stories describing personal experiences have been sent to the Press from residents throughout southern Chester County. Collectively, they form a tidal wave of anger and frustration – exacerbated by having to endure repeated power outages that reached a peak on June 19, when a severe storm knocked out energy to 327,000 PECO customers.

They’re far from alone. According to the state Public Utility Commission (PUC), Pennsylvania ranks fifth in the nation for weather-related outages, and the extreme weather events that have occurred since the year 2000 have cost the state up to $5 billion.

From Oxford to Toughkenamon and from Kennett Square to West Chester, the severity of circumstances has strangled mere inconvenience, leaving a community to tread vulnerably forward – waiting for the next outage to occur – in what has become, for many, the powerless summer.

‘You need to help us out here’

Before 2006, when Lynn Zbranak moved with her family to the Watson’s Mill development in London Britain Township – a spiraling curve of 16 well-appointed homes that offer stunning views of Landenberg – they lived in nearby Hockessin for 12 years.

During their time in Delaware, the Zbranak home lost power only once – for a one-day period on Sept. 15, 2003, when the remnants of Tropical Storm Henri produced heavy rainfall, including 9.02 inches of rain on Hockessin. Since their arrival in Landenberg, the Zbranaks have lived through several power outages during storms, some that have forced them to their basement without access to electricity and rendered their cell phones useless.

“I have the perspective that the pioneers settled this land and indigenous people settled this land before them, and they didn’t have electric and the internet, but in 2025, if you ask the average American, they will tell you that electricity and communications are basic necessities in today’s world,” said Zbranak, who is the president of the Watson’s Mill Homeowners Association. 

One of the prevailing sources of frustration for Zbranak in dealing with PECO outages – one that is shared by thousands of other customers in southern Chester County – is the inability to connect with an operator to report a problem. 

“The challenge is actually being able to talk with a person at PECO,” she said “You are directed to call centers and connected to people to whom repair is not their job or is outside their purview, so you get nowhere. It’s literally David battling Goliath. Will David win over in this case? Here’s hoping.”

In an email to the Press, Zbranak said that she had discussed the frequent power outages in the development at a recent London Britain Board of Supervisors meeting and was then directed to a representative from PECO’s External Affairs department. 

“I bothered her one weekend and told her we keep getting these texts that tell us that power will be restored by 7 p.m., then by 11 p.m., and each text kept pushing power restoration back,” she said. “I said to her, ‘You need to help us out here, because we can’t go for days and days without power.’ I am lucky to have an emergency generator, but I was thinking about all of the other residents who did not have a generator.”

Zbranak added that while she has heard back from one area lawmaker as a result of her recent email blast, “It’s time for less talk and more action,” she said. 

‘Clearly and patently false information’

In a recent email to the Chester County Press, Landenberg resident and PECO customer Walt Frank wrote that he has been a customer with at least six different utility companies in five different states.  

“In my 74 years,” he wrote, “I have never experienced a utility company as unreliable as PECO.”

 When asked why he gives PECO such poor marks, Frank answered simply: the frequency and the duration of the outages, coupled with the poor communication methods the power company has provided him during storms and outages.

“Thirty minutes after the start of the outage on June 19, I received two auto-generated phone calls at 5 p.m. telling me that my power would be returning by 7 p.m., when in reality it came back two days later,” said Frank, who is a neighbor of Zbranak in the Watson’s Mill development. “It is ludicrous that [a company] would create a system that would begin disseminating information thirty minutes after the outage began that estimates when a customer can anticipate seeing a restoration of service.”

“Why insult the customer (and fool the uninitiated who have not previously experienced PECO’s ineptitude) by putting out clearly and patently false information?” Frank wrote in an email to the Chester County Press.  “No information, initially, is better than idiotically false information. More broadly, in my experience, there is consistently inconsistent information, without timely updates, provided by PECO during outages via the various communication mechanisms (outage map, text messages, auto-generated phone calls, and – in those very, very rare situations where dogged determination allows you to actually reach a live person – from PECO personnel).  A PECO staffer actually told me once that I should never pay attention to the on-line outage map.”

Frank, who is about to spend between $8,000 and $10,000 to install a back-up generator for his home, agreed with Gamble’s comments that called for PECO to underwrite a portion of the cost of generators for those affected by the frequent outages. He also supports the idea of a Public Utilities Commission (PUC)-moderated public hearing that invites PECO officials to discuss what the company is doing to rectify the continuing frequency of power outages in the area.

The forum, Frank said, would “let people come in and personally voice their frustrations, and hopefully to higher level PECO management - not some lackey - to face the customers that they have served so poorly.”

‘I am basically camping in my own home’

In a recent email to the Chester County Press, a Kennett Township resident – who chose to withhold her name for this report – shared that she was recently forced to replace her home’s existing generator with a new one, at an expense that nearly dipped into five figures. As telltale proof of the frequency of power outages that have occurred at her home, her first generator had logged 660 hours of usage in less than 15 years, an average of one hour a day for two years.

In her email to the Press, she described PECO’s coverage as “pathetic” and “third world service.”

“When my power goes out, I have nothing - no water, no heat, no air conditioning, no toilets and no electricity, so I am basically camping in my own home,” said the homeowner, who has lived in the township since 1990 and has experienced power loss six times since last December, some lasting for four hours and a few that have lasted for days.

She shared that to prepare her home for storms, she fills her bathtub with buckets of water from a stream that flows through her three-acre property. During a recent storm – while her first generator was waiting to be repaired - she stayed at the nearby Mendenhall Inn to have access to a shower and the internet.

Like many frustrated PECO customers, she has found strength in collaboration. Together with a township neighbor, the homeowner formed a PECO Power Electric Outage committee in 2017 that brought them in personal contact with the company’s representatives several times. What they were told was startling; they found out that the master circuit that provided electric to over 3,000 customers in the area – known as Lenape 351 – was in the top five percent of the worst performing circuits in the PECO coverage area. 

She said she supports Gamble’s incentive to direct the township to explore the possibility of initiating a class action lawsuit on behalf of the township and perhaps surrounding municipalities to subpoena Exelon Executive Vice President and COO Michael A. Innocenzo, PECO President, CEO David 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.

“Right now, there is no penalty for the top-level management of PECO for not doing much,” she said. “You have to get upstream to do that, so charging them for generators for people for not doing their job would be a good thing. They’re not doing the job and there are not enough penalties at the highest levels, where it actually hurts them in their reputations and in their pocket books.”

Infrastructure improvements

In spite of the outbreak of power outages, PECO said in recent press releases that it remains committed to making improvements designed to lessen their frequency. In a June letter to its’ customers, the power company said that it is investing $2.9 million in an infrastructure improvement project in New Garden, West Marlborough, Kennett and East Marlborough townships and in Kennett Square Borough. Slated to begin in July and be completed by the first quarter of 2026, the project will upgrade and install new, innovative equipment, including new poles and tree resistant aerial wires along several roads and developments. 

The letter said that all work will be performed by PECO crews and qualified PECO contractors. “We have developed a plan to minimize direct customer impact as much as possible and to complete the project in a safe and timely manner,” the letter said. “During the next few weeks, qualified PECO contractor Davey Resource Group will be in your area surveying the necessary tree work. If there is required tree work on your property, we will contact you directly to review the plan in-person.”

In addition, the letter said that PECO will be investing more than $9.3 billion during the next five years across its’ electric and natural gas systems to help reinforce infrastructure and prevent significant damage and outages from future severe storm events.

‘We need a bigger portfolio of energy’

While PECO’s plans to improve its grid system throughout southern Chester County are a step in the right direction, some believe that the traditional method of transporting power through above-the-ground wires is becoming obsolete, and that “undergrounding” energy – relocating power lines in protected tunnels below the earth through directional drilling and trenching – will dramatically cut back on power outages caused by downed trees pulling down wires during severe weather incidents. 

One such idea in support of going underground was recently introduced in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. In response to a major storm that swept through her district in western Pennsylvania in April and left many of her constituents without power for as many as ten days, State Rep. Mandy Steele (D-Allegheny) introduced H.R. 254, a resolution to get the commonwealth to look into how the state can better protect its utility infrastructure against future and frequent weather events. The bill, which was adopted by the House and now moves to the Senate for discussion, will also require the Joint State Government Commission to study the effectiveness of burying electrical and utility lines throughout the state. Steele said that she will continue to work with the PUC in finding long-term solutions.

“I had hundreds of constituents without power - seniors and others who are sick and dependent on electricity to operate their life-saving devices,” Steele said. “People truly suffered, and they want to know how it can be prevented. Completing this study is a critical step in ensuring we can assist our communities in times of crisis.”

In a phone interview with the Chester County Press last week, State Rep. Christina Sappey of the 158th District said that she voted in favor of Steele’s resolution.

“It was a response to a massive power outage that went on for weeks in [State Rep. Steele’s] area of Allegheny County,” said Sappey, whose office has received complaints about PECO’s service over the last few months. “I continue to think that we need a bigger portfolio of energy. We need more up-to-date forms of power and electricity, such as wind, solar and natural gas, in order to address the need and keep costs down, and that is where we are stuck. A study is always a good place to start. Most of our studies get shoved in a drawer, but this is going to be very hard to ignore.”

Sappey said that a huge problem in her district is due in part to its rural nature, and while power restoration during storms gives preference to hospitals, nursing homes, retirement villages and densely populated areas, those in outlying areas are slow to receive service.

“That’s where it gets frustrating for a district like the 158th,” she said. “Because we have a lot of rural to suburban-rural sprawl, there could be five outages in the area that are spread out.”

Sappey, who chaired an energy and climate forum at the Kennett Township Building on April 14 that featured three Pennsylvania environmental experts, said that she is considering hosting a future public event that will address the way PECO is responding to power outages in the community.

“I will continue to keep talking about this,” she said. “We have a real problem on our hands. Our energy suppliers are obviously going to do what the PUC allows them to do, but the truth is that we don’t have the reliability that we need.”

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].