Keeping Our Promises to Customers
In the hours and days after an unprecedented storm swept into Western Pennsylvania on April 29, 2025, Duquesne Light Company (DLC) worked tirelessly to restore power to more than 300,000 customers whose service was impacted by strong winds and fallen trees, among other hazards.
Following our storm response, the company also immediately began to collect internal data and, more importantly, external feedback, from conducting focus groups with impacted customers to attending public meetings and engaging with elected and community leaders and more. And while we are proud of the work we accomplished in late April and early May, we understand that those efforts did not meet expectations for everyone, and that our work in recovering from this storm was really only the beginning.
As we promised in May, DLC undertook a rigorous after-action review that involved dozens of meetings with employees, focus groups with affected customers, benchmarking sessions with peer utilities and industry organizations, brainstorming with our vendors on how to better leverage their products and services, and public hearings and private meetings with elected officials and emergency services partners, among other practices.
We are committed to sharing our learnings from that review with our stakeholders, and we will make available a more in-depth report this week on our website. However, we want to share several of the most immediate actions that DLC has already taken or is currently working to achieve that will significantly improve how we serve our customers and prepare for and recover from severe weather in the future, many of which build upon existing initiatives and priorities.
Technology: DLC has expanded the number of available ports in our automated phone system so that we’re able to simultaneously service more customers over the phone when a major storm hits. We implemented an enhancement to automatically update the homepage of DuquesneLight.com with storm-related resources as soon as DLC goes into storm protocol along with other enhancements for our customer experience. The company is also piloting a chatbot function on the website to facilitate customer interactions for services that do not require more in-depth assistance.
In addition, field crews have been given additional capabilities to access internal systems that will speed up the assessment and restoration processes. Implementation of new crew management technology to handle the large numbers of internal and external crews, contractors and mutual assistance resources that respond to significant storms is ongoing. And this month, the company is partnering with a third party on an eight-week initiative to measure our storm-related capacity across digital customer channels (web, mobile, IVR) and our ability to scale up during large outages. Those recommended improvements will be available by the end of the year.
Estimated Time of Restoration (ETR) Strategy: DLC has undertaken a holistic review to how it establishes and communicates ETRs, including reviewing all messaging and refining it with customer input to ensure it is clear and easy to understand, and we’re identifying new roles within our storm response process focused on better management of ETRs. We are increasing collaboration across departments to have ETRs updated as efficiently as possible to provide customers with better information for planning during an outage, including the creation of a new internal storm dashboard.
Customer Messaging: DLC continues to reevaluate its strategy related to customer messaging, and that includes an ongoing campaign encouraging customers to update their contact information, ensuring they receive timely updates during storms and other outages. DLC is also preparing proactive campaigns to educate customers and media on electrical safety with downed wires, how to report outages and overall storm preparedness, including what to do with food. And our teams are already developing 2-way text messaging capabilities so customers can reply back via text to DLC’s “outage restored” notification. DLC will continue to enhance its messaging on the outage map and outage alerts sent to customers, including planned updates to outage causes and crew statuses.
Training and Operations: DLC has begun providing additional training to trouble responders, damage assessors and field repair crews, and created a new procedure to better manage significant, localized damage in a community or specific geographic area to facilitate restoration of service more effectively. We are also implementing additional industry best practices related to developing and maintaining ETRs, damage assessment, road clearing/wires down, transfer of control and decentralized operations and scalable storm plans. Overall, DLC is in the process of spending $2.7 billion in upgrades and modernization of our grid by 2029, with $50 million dedicated to vegetation management efforts alone over the next five years.
Soliciting Feedback: DLC conducted focus groups with customers affected by the April 29 storm to help inform these improvements and plans to conduct additional qualitative research by yearend to partner with customers in updating messaging and enhancing the ETR strategy. A new after-outage survey is planned for implementation in 2026 to measure customer experience during outages, driving continuous improvement.
This storm was like nothing our region has ever experienced, and we are using it as a catalyst to improve our performance in many facets of our operations. It is also an opportunity to strengthen our partnerships with customers, elected officials and government agencies at the local, county and state levels. Our combined efforts in moments of crisis like April’s storm are the real key to protecting our region and rebounding as an even stronger community.
We heard our customers, and Duquesne Light Company is already a stronger organization because of that feedback. Our relentless desire to do better is inspired by our commitment to serve the people of Western Pennsylvania with safe, resilient and affordable power now and into our bright shared future.