PECO Energy Profile

Pennsylvania’s largest utility, PECO Energy Co. provides electricity and natural gas distribution and retail sales to 1.6 million electricity customers and 485,000 natural gas customers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia.

PECO is part of Exelon Corp., one of the nation’s largest electric utilities with approximately $19 billion in annual revenues. Exelon is headquartered in Chicago. Peco purchases its electricity and gas from Exelon Generation Co., another Exelon subsidiary.

Smart Grid

In 2008 the state of Pennsylvania

passed legislation that orders the state's utilities to make smart meters available to all customers within the next 10 years. PECO is expected in Summer 2009 to file a plan proposing the deployment of two-way smart meters to its 1.6 million customers.

PECO will also invest nearly $4 million this year on distribution automation, one facet of its annual reliability improvement program. PECO has more than 1,300 smart switches on its electric distribution system across the Greater Philadelphia region. Nearly 50 distribution circuits will be upgraded this year with reclosers or sectionalizers.

PECO is also upgrading telecommunication equipment on existing devices to enable them to share information between one another, making them part of PECO’s ongoing development of a Smart Grid.

Renewables

In January 2009, PECO announced it will purchase about 4.1 million kWh of wind energy annually for the next three years, or the equivalent of 15% of the total energy use at its Philadelphia headquarters. The purchase represents a 50% increase over its previous wind energy purchase and is part of a more than $15 million initiative to support Exelon 2020: A Low-Carbon Roadmap. PECO has offered a voluntary wind energy option to its residential and business customers since 2004 and says more than 36,000 consumers participate.

In May 2009, PECO signed five-year agreements for the purchase of renewable energy credits equal to 412,000 MW hours of renewable energy. Along with a similar agreement made in August 2008, it brings PECO’s renewable energy credit purchase to 452,000 per year, making it the first utility in Pennsylvania to buy and bank renewable energy credits to meet the state’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS) requirements.

For vendors only …

Exelon is not moving swiftly – two years for a Smart Grid roadmap and another six months for an AMI roadmap. But PECO, at any rate, will need to move into high gear sooner rather than later given Pennsylvania’s smart meter mandate.