O&R Sets New Record for Electric Service to Customers

PEARL RIVER, NY January 11, 2008 — Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. announced today that its customers experienced in 2007 the most reliable electric service in the utility's 108-year history.

The average O&R customer experienced only one outage over five minutes' duration in 2007. The next best year for O&R customers was 2001 when the average customer saw electric service interrupted 1.07 times. The standard set by regulators, based on O&R's past performance, was 1.36 outages per average customer annually.

Vice President – Operations Jim Tarpey hailed today's news as the culmination of several years of hard work and careful planning.

"We've done well and we are on-track to continue to do well," Tarpey said. "O&R customers are seeing a higher level of every-day service reliability than ever before. They have come to expect it, and we plan to deliver it. We've set the bar very high."

He added, "We intend to build on this success, and will focus on those particular areas that have experienced more than the average number of interruptions. The success of our approach to continually improve reliability provides a sturdy platform from which to achieve our goals."

Tarpey cited a pro-active tree-trimming plan, a strong infrastructure upgrade and replacement program and the implementation of new technologies to help better manage the electric system as reasons for the service reliability improvement.

He added that 2007's relatively mild weather contributed to the record, but that a few storms during the year "could have done some very serious damage" if the system had not been fortified as well as it had.

The reliability standards exclude extreme weather conditions that cause electric service to more than 10 percent of the customers in a region to be interrupted. In 2007, only one such event was excluded.