DUSHORE, Pa. — Whenever Mike Krause of Dushore loses power, it's usually because of a big storm or accident, and that's when he turns on his generator.
But it was running on Tuesday, which means Krause has none, and it's not because of the obvious reasons.
It's because Penelec, an electric company, is working to improve power reliability for their customers.
"We have been left without power several times over the last number of years and to be more reliable and not even have to worry about it or have my wife trying to figure out how to start the generator and all that is much better than what we've been going through," said Krause.
New wires were put up on Churchhill Street as part of the three-year project.
The new power lines will act as a detour for power service if a wire is impacted.
Rather than having to fix it to get power back to those customers, their service will be rerouted to another line that's working and fed to the property.
"That's always our goal is to keep the lights on 100 percent of the time, so when you do a project like this, if you do it right, you don't notice anything. We're just trying to make sure that if there's going to be an outage that it's shorter and impacts fewer people," said Todd Meyer, a Penelec spokesperson.
The project from Dushore to New Albany not only impacts Penelec customers but also Sullivan County Rural Electric Co-ops as well.
Jim Farrell owns Farrell Family Farm just down the road from the crews working on the power lines. He's another person who lost power; he's happy the work won't cost him more on his bill.
"I hope it works out. It's supposed to be more reliable, and I'm for it," said Farrell.
Service was out for about eight hours.
Penelec says looking ahead, customers should expect about two more portions of the project to be completed by October.
Customers will be contacted if they will be affected.