Commission officials said the culprits were familiar: severe storms, tree damage and an aging grid. And while new grid technology has helped utilities limit the number of customers affected in some cases, it often complicates repairs and leaves those who do lose service in the dark for longer. Trouble spots in Allegheny County Duquesne Light, which serves Allegheny and Beaver counties, reported seven major outage events last year, cutting service to more than 216,000 customers. The worst came June 17, when storms knocked out power to more than 108,000. Trees outside of rights-of-way and failing equipment were behind nearly half of Duquesne Light's interruptions. The PUC said reliability slipped noticeably compared to 2023, with outage times and overall service minutes lost both climbing. Reliability indicators worsened from 2023: the company's CAIDI (average repair time) rose to 156 minutes — well above the benchmark — and its SAIDI (average outage minutes per customer) doubled to 127 minutes.