Wish you had more information about when the power will be back on during an outage? Well PECO just made it easier for 1.6 million of its customers to monitor power outages with its innovative, new two-way texting system.

The new program was implemented by its Exelon subsidiary on Monday and will allow customers to report power outages in real time and receive continuous updates of the situation on their mobile phones.

To activate the service, users of the Philadelphia based utility provider have to register their cell phone number to their account, and then they simply have to send a text message with the word “ADDOUTAGE” to MYPECO (697376).
“We are transforming the way we interact with our customers,” said PECO president and CEO, Craig Adams. “Our customers have told us they want anytime, anywhere access to important account information, and this new tool helps us meet our customer’s expectations.”

Apart from the power monitoring two-way texting service, PECO has also announced an additional new tool for its customers, as they will now be able to customize the way they receive billing, outage, usage, and additional information from PECO.

The additional information can include notifications letting people know when their electric or gas usage is trending higher normal. This can give advance notice of a potentially bigger bill and also offers the chance to address the issue straight away.

This new tool can be activated by visiting peco.com/alerts and from there customers can choose what they want to be notified about and specify if they want to receive the information by phone, text message, or email.

The changes come after PECO already launched a set of new online and mobile tools earlier this year, in order to provide its customers with improved and more convenient service options.