Several energy, advocacy groups request AES Indiana storm outage investigation

Several state energy and advocacy groups have filed a formal petition to investigate AES Indiana’s practices and procedures for restoring power after storm outages. The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor and Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana (CAC) filed this petition requesting the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission complete this investigation.

It follows widespread power outages after a series of storms moved through central Indiana on June 29. This affected about 20 percent of AES customers and power was not fully restored until the evening of July 4.

AES said previously it had to replace more than 50 poles and repair 39 transformers during and after this string of storms. Sometimes, this would involve repairing a piece of infrastructure and having it come down during a later wave of the storm.

READ MORE: Long power outages raise questions about infrastructure resilience in Indiana

Join the conversation and sign up for the Indiana Two-Way. Text "Indiana" to 73224. Your comments and questions in response to our weekly text help us find the answers you need on statewide issues, including this series on climate change and solutions.

CAC advocates said power outages of this length can cause food and medicine to spoil, and can be life-threatening given rising temperatures. They said Hoosiers deserve “reliable” power grids in the future.

AES is about half way through $1.2 billion in funds to modernize its infrastructure. Advocates said replacing infrastructure and making it more resilient with these kinds of funds are important to ensuring power grids remain intact during severe storms.

The petition, available online, includes customer complaints about power outages up to five days after the storm.

Violet is our daily news reporter. Contact her at vcomberwilen@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @ComberWilen.

Copyright 2023 IPB News. To see more, visit IPB News.