The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for the second consecutive year, has predicted an above-average hurricane season in the Atlantic.

Hurricane season officially began on Tuesday, and PPL Electric Utilities is ready.

NOAA on May 20 announced that a likely range of 13 to 20 named storms - those that have wind speeds of 39 mph or higher - are expected in 2021. Those prediction numbers also include the expected possibility of three to five major hurricanes.

Each year, PPL Electric Utilities’ 1.4 million customers can typically expect to be affected in some way by hurricanes, or more commonly their remnants, between June 1 and Nov. 30. Severe weather can bring trees down on poles and wires and sometimes cause power outages. When that happens, PPL is prepared to work safely and as quickly as possible, around the clock, to get the lights back on.

While outages do occur, PPL continues to make investments to bolster the reliability of the power it delivers. This has helped reduce the number of outages customers experience, and in many cases, has allowed them to stop outages before they even occur. In fact, with state-of-the-art automated sensors and switches, plus an advanced software system, PPL has avoided more than 1 million customer outages since 2015.

PPL also has invested in smart grid devices that reduce the size of the area affected by an outage by instantly rerouting power around trouble spots. Additional improvements made are new power lines and substations, stronger and more storm-resistant poles, and an improved vegetation-management program that has led to a 30% decrease in customer outages since 2011.

Getting customers the electricity they need, when they need it, is a top priority for PPL. The utility has a strong commitment to keep innovating and making its grid safer, stronger, smarter and more reliable. For more information on what PPL is doing to keep the grid reliable, visit pplelectric.com/reliability.