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Pepco CEO Joseph Rigby on efforts to restore power to its customers experiencing outages due to a storm and efforts to invest in the company’s elect...
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Find out because we have the CEO of the company that rich just mentioned of course hundreds of thousands of energy provider -- -- customers.
Are without power but let's get the actual numbers and figure out what's going on with Joseph -- the chairman and CEO.
Of Pepco who joins me now can you -- the -- sum up to date numbers because I would imagine minor -- your your folks are working very hard to restore power.
Last I have 433000.
Were without power how does it look.
Now.
Well at the F peak right after the storm our overall outages were about 460000.
And we -- that number down to about 225000.
So as was mentioned we've been able to work it down by about half but obviously we still have a lot a lot of work to do.
And as you mentioned that we had provided an estimated time to restore the vast majority -- Friday.
And it's our intention to try to -- that.
-- of storms were particularly ferocious sixty mile per hour winds.
Just -- ridiculously difficult time when will all of you're customers have power restored.
Well as they said we you know we provided an estimate yesterday.
To give people some some information so they could start to plan their lives and we indicated we've had at least 90% restored by Friday.
Which would imply that some would bleed into the weekend we're gonna try to pull that.
Pull that up.
As best we can yesterday when we provided any information.
We were still in the process of having a lot of external crews from different parts of the country come.
There are here now we have about 700.
Additional line crews helping our folks we now have about 17100 people in the field.
Working right now to get this this restoration done as safely as quickly as we can.
Well -- quarter to explain to people have networks say it's not that you have so many crews to deal with these things but you all share Florida crews will come up.
From different companies to help you you will go down when hurricanes hit Florida.
But these -- and storms while vicious are not surprises which leaves just two.
A report that came out sir and I know that you know this already but that the American customer satisfaction groups that -- cocaine in last in customer satisfaction.
That you guys had high prices.
And and the service was not up to up to speak people get very emotional about power outages I get that I live in New Jersey happens all the time we're always getting hit.
But what can you do to fix that as a publicly traded company.
Well.
I think -- -- well obviously which -- referring to is is from a series of storms that came through in the summer of 2010.
And it did indicate that we needed to make further investments to improve the reliability.
We have been for the last two years embarking on an enormous investment in the infrastructure.
Billions of dollars that will be investing.
Over the next five years and it is actually starting to really show the positive results.
We -- going to need to deal with with continuing that investment over time financially it does mean NET1 occasion we're gonna have to -- -- and raise rates.
But it -- all intended to help us meet our customers' expectations.
So that's something that you are anticipating is that rates will be raised.
That's correct in fact we have in front of our regulators are state commissions we do have a series of cases in front of them.
Requesting the authority to and to increase the rates but -- -- intended to be able to to deliver their acts -- on those expectations.
Do you expect this that regulators to approve them.
Well you know we've gone through and all of the life testimony in fact some of the decisions are.
Are are are are are not that far away so we're gonna have the answer.
Really -- -- probably in a couple weeks over the next month or so.
Joseph Rigby pet co CEO a lot of work to be done not I I sympathize with poverty utilities and you have seen people screaming at the guys -- they're trying to -- back up the wires.
-- these are forced mature situations but we're hoping that that you get better at the process -- keep us posted it.
Absolutely thanks thanks a -- for having -- you're welcome.
