The best power outage is one that never happens.

Since 2015, that’s been the case more than a million times for PPL Electric Utilities customers, thanks to smart grid technology that instantaneously reroutes power in the event of a problem, keeping the outage area contained to the smallest possible footprint.

In the past five-plus years, PPL estimates its smart grid automated power restoration network has helped customers avoid 100 million minutes in the dark in preventing those 1 million outages.

The smart grid network - a combination of state-of-the-art sensors and switches, coupled with advanced software systems - is part of a significant investment made by PPL in the power grid overall over the past decade.

During that time, the company also has rebuilt aging power lines and added more storm-resistant wires and poles, instituted innovative data-driven equipment maintenance and replacement programs, and more. Other initiatives, like a comprehensive tree trimming and removal program, also play a key role in reliability improvements over time.

PPL’s collective reliability efforts, bolstered by its smart grid gains, have reduced the average frequency of outages across its grid by nearly a third since 2011.