LAKEWOOD, Ohio — Ohio's Public Utilities Commission (PUCO) is proposing a more than $3 million penalty against the FirstEnergy utility serving Lakewood after an investigation found probable violations of state law tied to repeated power outages that left thousands of customers without power during two of the hottest months this year.
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PUCO issued a notice of probable noncompliance to FirstEnergy on Friday, saying, "Although temperatures were very high during this time, storms and high winds were not a factor in most of the outages."
The notice proposes a $3,049,750 civil forfeiture and six corrective actions aimed at the utility’s infrastructure, equipment and communication with customers.
PUCO staff investigated recent outages that took place from June 30 through July 15.
According to PUCO, the data indicated that most of the outages are classified as being caused by equipment or line failure.
The following is a summary of some of the outages caused by equipment failures, per PUCO:
- June 30: Beginning at approximately 3:30 PM, over 3,000 customers served by the Lakewood substation experienced outages due to equipment/line/recloser/breaker failures, most lasting between 2 to 4 hours, but up to 17.6 hours for 60 customers on Circuit H030LW. Other Circuits affected included H001FT, H001FM, H003FM, H004FM, L003EW, H013LD, and H005LD. All but 244 customers were restored as of 9 AM on July 1, 2026.
- July 1: At approximately 7:30 PM, a faulted underground cable outage occurred affecting 4,650 customers served from the Lauderdale Substation. All but 942 customers were restored by 11:55 PM, and another 400 customers were restored overnight via a temporary step-down transformer installation.
- July 2: At approximately 2:15 PM, a second cable issue was identified at the Lauderdale substation causing another outage to 3,023 customers. By 6:30 PM, 1,718 customers were restored via load transfers and other restoration efforts, which left 1,505 customers still without service. At 7 PM, another 193 customers were restored when the original cable fault was repaired. At approximately 3 AM the following day, after a series of temporary outages deployed on selected Lauderdale substation circuits to safely avoid loading constraints, all remaining Lauderdale customers were restored to service. 1,061 customers were without power for over 10 hours.
- July 3: Revised outage reports submitted on July 3rd at 8 AM and 4:05 PM indicate outage numbers were fluctuating, but that additional equipment and line failure outages lasting for at least 2 hours were occurring and/or being repaired in and around the city of Lakewood and surrounding areas.
- July 3: At approximately 6:50 PM, an outage occurred affecting 1,010 customers served from Lakewood Substation due to loading constraints caused by a faulted cable. All affected customers were returned to service at around 3:16 PM on July 4, 2026. Customers had been without power for approximately 20 hours.
- July 14: At approximately 1:54 PM, an underground cable feed to the Edgewater substation from Grovewood substation failed causing 6,359 customers to lose power. Service was restored to these customers by approximately 3:23 PM. Later that day at approximately 5:36 PM, 6,539 customers fed from Edgewater substation lost power again as a transformer at Dawson substation tripped offline due to high oil temperature. Service for these customers was restored by approximately 6:34 PM. These customers were without power for approximately 2.5 hours.
- July 15: At or between approximately 9:35 PM and 11:20 PM, outage reports submitted by CEI indicated Lakewood customers experienced additional outages lasting 2 to 8+ hours. The outage cause cited on the report was equipment failure. Service was restored to these customers by approximately 9:15 AM the following day.
PUCO staff conducted field visits in the Lakewood area where they found "a significant amount of infrastructure that seemed, on the whole, older than infrastructure found elsewhere in CEI’s (FirstEnergy) service territory."
PUCO staff also reported sprinklers (i.e., garden or lawn-watering style) deployed at Lauderdale and Dawson substations spraying water on transformers for cooling purposes.
"Staff’s understanding is sprinklers are typically fixed, installed systems reserved for fire suppression and emergency events. Staff found CEI’s application to be unusual and outside industry standards and norms for cooling of substation transformer equipment. The Company acknowledged during discussions that the sprinklers are something they use routinely on extreme heat days to assist cooling transformer equipment and indicated they consider it an industry standard practice," the PUCO notice reads.
Lakewood Mayor Meghan George wasn't available for an interview on Friday, but her office did provide a statement responding to PUCO's findings.
"We knew things were bad, but I was shocked and outraged when I read that FirstEnergy was attempting to cool its failing equipment with garden sprinklers. I am glad that the City’s demand for significant financial penalties against FirstEnergy was supported by PUCO – it has become clear that the only way this company will ever fix things is if we can hit their pocketbooks. The city of Lakewood will continue to work through PUCO to hold FirstEnergy accountable and force it to fix Lakewood’s power grid," George said in the statement.
Last month, George called on PUCO to reopen its investigation into FirstEnergy.
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The findings are preliminary, and FirstEnergy has until Aug. 21 to respond.
If the electric company fails to do so, it could result in additional penalties, including $10,000 per violation, per day.
Per PUCO, the following are proposed corrective actions:
- Implement the corrective actions as described in the October 1, 2025 letter resolving the prior notice of probable noncompliance.
- Perform an analysis of all distribution infrastructure and equipment serving the city of Lakewood that failed and determine whether it was operating above or below its designed peak load no later than October 31, 2026. To the extent any distribution infrastructure or equipment is identified that failed while operating above its designed peak load, replace the infrastructure or equipment to increase available capacity no later than Dec 31, 2027. To the extent any distribution infrastructure or equipment is identified that failed while operating below its designed peak load, the company must perform an analysis and provide Staff with a report explaining the cause for the equipment failure no later than December 31, 2026.
- Perform a review of all distribution infrastructure and equipment serving the city of Lakewood to assign a potential useful life based on manufacturer specifications and/or known failure rates by October 31, 2026. Following this review, provide staff with a scheduled replacement plan for all distribution infrastructure and equipment no later than December 31, 2026.
- Perform an inspection of all underground lead cables serving the Lakewood, Lauderdale, Edgewater, and Clinton substations no later than September 4, 2026 and complete any repairs needed no later than December 31, 2026. To the extent not already included in the replacement plan provided to Staff in response to corrective actions 2 or 3 above, provide staff with a plan to replace all underground lead cables serving substations in
and around the city of Lakewood, including, but not limited to the Lakewood, Lauderdale, Edgewater, Clinton, and Grovewood substations. - Continue to notify the PUCO of any additional outages impacting the Lakewood area and include the outage causes, circuit number and if the circuit is part of an ongoing action plan to improve its performance.
- Provide Staff with CEI’s steps to improve communications to communities and customers who experience outages, especially as it relates to increasing an estimated restoration time.
I reached out to FirstEnergy for comment on Friday. A spokesperson told me the company has received PUCO's notice and is now reviewing it carefully.
"We will continue working cooperatively with PUCO Staff throughout this process and will respond once our review is complete," FirstEnergy said in an email. "We understand how important electric service is to our customers and recognize the disruption outages can cause for families, businesses and communities. Our focus remains on providing safe, dependable service while maintaining open communication with customers, community leaders and other stakeholders."
FirstEnergy noted that it's continuing to make significant investments in Lakewood's electric system.
"In Lakewood, this work includes transformer upgrades, equipment replacements, enhanced system monitoring and other infrastructure improvements designed to reduce outages and support restoration efforts. Many of these improvements are already underway and yielding results. We will continue evaluating opportunities to further strengthen the electric system and enhance the customer experience," FirstEnergy said.
Lakewood Councilmember Tom Bullock told me the notice is a promising sign.
"There were a number of things in that list of recommendations," he said. "The one that — to me — is most significant is they're saying by Halloween this year, the utility has to study the whole system better, the whole grid inside and adjacent to Lakewood, anything that is involved in delivering electrons, and then by Dec. 31, have a repair plan for it. So to me, if these recommendations are implemented, that is the beginning of getting to the bottom of this once and for all."
While the plan has yet to be finalized, Bullock called it a strong first step.
"I think it's made a difference that everybody has spoken up, reported their details of their power outage in the survey that I had, and called the Public Utilities Commission directly making it clear that we're experiencing actual problems. We should all keep it up," Bullock said.
