CLEVELAND — Pressure is mounting on FirstEnergy as critics urge state regulators to reject the utility’s request to loosen power outage reliability standards in Ohio.
What FirstEnergy is asking for
The case dates back to Dec. 2024, when three FirstEnergy-regulated electric companies — Ohio Edison, Toledo Edison and the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. — filed a request to change key reliability standards.
All three want more time to restore outages. Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison also want to allow more outages per year.
According to Jennifer Young, a spokesperson for FirstEnergy, the proposed changes involve the reliability standards for two metrics known as “SAIFI,” or the system average interruption frequency index, (which) represents the average number of interruptions per customer, and “CAIDI,” or the customer average interruption duration index, which represents the average interruption duration or average time to restore service per interrupted customer.”…