[lightman]

North of the Mason-Dixon Met-Ed was severly reprimanded by the PA Public Utility Commission for its slow response following Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003...a storm that had me 96 hours without power.

The PA-PUC mandated a very aggressive schedule of tree trimming and other preventive maintenance plus installing cut-off fuses at the beginning of long branches of the line. Some of my neighbors’ lane strech 1/2 mile or farther, now their lines are isolated at the beginning of their branch lines.

All that has helped. but still endured two 50 hour outages last year.

[Paladin2]

I got my neighbors together a decade ago to complain to the PSC and get our block's ~50 year old high voltage wires, pole cross ties and insulators replaced and the whole thing given a prune job.

The extension to another block where folks didn't want the tree trimming got a circuit breaker so they don't bring us down anymore.

It's been a definite improvement in reliability.

Buying a sine wave inverter to run off a bank of 12volt batteries and hooking up to the cars for recharging takes care providing minimal 120v backup (has to be manually rigged).