Summer power outages will be focus of hearings

About 700,000 Ameren customers in Missouri and Illinois were without electricity - some for as long as nine days - after thunderstorms and severe winds ripped through the area on July 19 and 21, knocking down poles and wires.

It was the third time in three years that hundreds of thousands of Ameren customers in Missouri lost service as a result of major storms. The PSC voted 4-1 on July 27 to begin a formal investigation into how Ameren and other utilities had prepared for the storms and their response to the outages.

Ameren executives have said the severity of the storms, some of which packed 70 mph winds, made it impossible to avoid or even minimize the number and duration of outages.

The PSC investigation specifically will examine failures of customer service phone lines, whether Ameren did all it could to restore power and whether the company has been keeping up with tree trimming.

The commission's investigation isn't focused just on Ameren. It is also looking at outages affecting customers of other regulated companies, such as Missouri-American Water Co. and AT&T.

The PSC authorized its staff to file a complaint against any of the companies if warranted.