The PUC has agreed to launch a comprehensive investigation into PPL’s sub-standard performance in restoring electricity to area consumers.

Haha - no, just kidding.  While the PUC is going to “review” utility response, both PPL and Met-Ed will no doubt place blame squarely on the ice itself, rather than address the root cause of the problem.  The matter will then be dropped and never examined again.  This is roughly equivalent to, say, home lenders substituting higher interest rates for creditworthiness, then blaming the resulting mass defaults on “market fluctuation and dynamic metric performance”.

Had either utility seen financial motivation to actually deploy infrastructure that could handle the weather (underground wiring, anyone?), we wouldn’t be hearing about how 48- to 72-hour outages are “acceptable”.  What is the most frustrating to me is that, beyond any shadow of a doubt, both Met-Ed’s and PPL’s corporate intranet will soon be flooded with bulletins praising “our dedicated technicians for the unprecedented speed, efficiency, and customer focus with which they responded to what was the most catastrophic event of the 21st century.”  I’d like to say I’m utilizing hyperbole here, but PPL called the event “unprecedented”, and Met-Ed called it “a catastrophic weather event”.

“Unprecedented”.  I do not think that word means what they think it means.