Officials with Louisville-based utility E.ON U.S. say they're eager to evaluate the recommendations included in areport from the Kentucky Public Service Commission on last September's windstorm and January's ice storm.The two disasters left hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians without power.The report released Thursday includes 64 findings and recommendations for utilities and others. They include improving communication with customers, strengthening of overhead power lines and bolstering backup power for cell phone towers.
E.ON U.S. spokesperson Chris Whelan says the PSC did a thorough job of compiling information for the report."i think there are a lot of suggestions in there that will help all of the utilities going forward in the event somthing like this were to occur. We as a company see that the process was very well done and comprehensive," Whelan said."We'll evaluate the various recommendations and see how that plays into our strategy and what improvements we can make. I will say we are already on the way to several of the improvements."She says one of those improvements, an enhanced outage map, is already in the works."In the first quarter of 2010, we will roll out interactive maps that show people not only their zip code but their county and even down to the street level and where outages are and where crews are and so forth. so that will be a big improvement for us," Whelan said.Utililty companies under the PSC's jurisdiction have about three months to respond to the report.(Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Public Service Commission)
