Two-tenths of an inch of rain + slight wind gusts -- lightning = 2,700 people with no electricity.

		Graphic: When the lights go out

That was the equation yesterday for Duquesne Light Co. line workers, who struggled with three power outages that left some areas of Allegheny County without electricity for a total of seven hours.

National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Coblentz said scattered storms that hit the region at 6:55 a.m. did not seem forceful enough to knock out so much power, especially since winds were slight and there was no lightning to knock out transformers.

However benign the weather, two of the outages were caused by trees that fell in Shadyside and the North Hills.

The multiple outages renewed debate about the reliability of Duquesne Light's service.

A consumer advocate said Duquesne Light's system is "vulnerable" to problems due to employment cuts in the late 1990s and the effects of deregulation of the industry in Pennsylvania in 1998.

"The system really is in need of repairs. It's a vulnerable system," said David Hughes, executive director of Citizen Power, based in Pittsburgh.

"It definitely needs what the company is proposing," he said of the utility's improvement plans.

As reported yesterday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Duquesne Light is in the midst of a $500 million upgrade to its system, which has 585,000 residential and commercial customers in Allegheny and Beaver counties ("Duquesne Light to spend half-billion to reduce power outages").

The utility company plans to replace aging circuits and equipment and improve power capacity before the end of 2007.

The upgrades can't come too soon for Duquesne Light power line workers, who spent yesterday morning and part of the afternoon restoring service.

Power was restored to all customers by 4:50 p.m., said company spokesman Joe Balaban.

The Shadyside problem was particularly vexing because the crews initially thought a switch had failed, knocking out electricity to most of the 2,700 customers who were affected yesterday. Those customers live on Emerson Street, Ellsworth Avenue, Amberson Avenue, and parts of Devonshire and Claybourne streets.

The other two outages -- in Ross and West Homestead -- affected only a handful of customers.

Workers repaired the Shadyside switch at 10:03 a.m., but when they found out at about noon that some customers still didn't have power, they went back and discovered that a fallen tree near Amberson had clipped three lines -- two they had fixed with the switch repair and another that served 270 customers.

They reconnected the third line to a transformer, restoring all power to the area by 2 p.m., the utility company said.

"A big wire came down on my lawn at about 7," said Annette Werner, who lives at Amberson and Ellsworth. "When I called [Duquesne Light], the automated message said it would be up at 9.

"There were about 10 guys here, and they put the wire up, but my power still isn't on," she said at noon, standing on the sidewalk outside her home.

"We are so dependent on it [electricity]," she said. "It's times like this that you realize how much."

The outage highlighted what many Shadyside merchants say are recurring outages, from seconds of flickering to many minutes without power, even in nice weather. Yesterday, at various times, the outage stalled coffee makers, emptied restaurant tables and canceled a day camp.

"The lights will flicker on sunny days, too," said Kevin Holloway, manager of Coffee Tree Roasters on Walnut Street.

Mr. Holloway opened yesterday with power, but just moments before 10:30 a.m., as he was operating a cappuccino machine, the room went dark, silencing the cappuccino maker and everything else. He said he silently mouthed, "Oh, no." A few seconds later, the power zoomed back with a forceful hum.

Merchants on Ellsworth Avenue said their power flickers or goes off for minutes at a time with some frequency.

Christine Berardi owns Hip'tique Decor, a boutique on Ellsworth to which she walks with her dogs in the morning. She said she didn't have power at her home, a 10-minute walk away, but arrived at the shop relieved that the dogs could get some relief from the air conditioner.

"The power goes off much more often at the shop than at home," she said.

At The Bagel Factory on Ellsworth, owner David Feldstein reported that his son showed up for Rodef Shalom's day camp, at Fifth and Morewood avenues, at 9 a.m., and learned it was canceled for the day because of the outage. About the same time, customers were telling him that their homes were without power.

At La Feria and its sister restaurant Pamela's, on Walnut, power was out until about 10 a.m., delaying the opening of Pamela's. La Feria opens for lunch at 11 a.m.

"It happened before we opened at 8," said Pamela's manager, Leon Grant. "We put a note on our door, apologizing that because of the power outage, we're temporarily closed."

Another downed tree caused a power failure at the Eat'n Park on McKnight Road in Ross shortly before 7 a.m.

A wire fell in West Homestead about 7:15 a.m. and caused outages on one block for about 15 people. Their power was restored at about 10 a.m., Duquesne Light said.

As part of the $500 million system upgrade, Duquesne Light President and Chief Executive Officer Morgan O'Brien said the utility company planned to hire 150 new full-time employees and 120 contractors to do the work, which, he said, will reduce the number of power outages.

Dr. Jay Apt, executive director of Carnegie Mellon University's Electricity Energy Center, said that while the upgrades will help, Duquesne Light already provides reliable service, especially for an urban power company with 12,000 miles of above-ground and underground power lines.

About 5,000 miles of Duquesne Light's lines are underground, said Mr. Balaban. Underground lines prevent storm damage but take three times longer to repair than overhead lines because it's harder for crews to find the source of the problem and get access to the lines.

Dr. Apt said Duquesne Light already employs technology that many other utility companies have yet to install.

"In general in the U.S., the average customer loses power two or three times a year for between two and eight hours," he said. "Those are just normal outages of the distribution system and the causes vary.

"In general, my impression, having lived in Boston, Houston and Los Angeles, is that Pittsburgh is neither better nor worse than most systems."

Mr. Hughes said employee cutbacks in the late 1990s and deregulation of the state power industry in 1998 has left Duquesne Light's distribution system "wanting."

With deregulation, he said, the state Public Utility Commission now has less oversight of utility operations, leaving the local power grid more vulnerable.

"I'm aware [Duquesne Light] has problems, and they have had them for a long time," Mr. Hughes said. "A lot of their equipment is faulty. A lot of their transformers are old. It's an aging system.

"That's why they really need to do this work," he said. "This all could have been avoided."

Mr. Balaban disputed Mr. Hughes' comments.

The utility company has kept up with technology, never reduced the number of front-line service employees and now is investing a half-billion dollars to upgrade its system, he said.

"We're one of the best [power companies], if not the best, in the commonwealth," he said. "We want it to stay that way, and that's why we are making the investment."

State Consumer Advocate Sonny Popowsky and state Public Utility Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher said that in recent years, no consumer complaints had been filed against Duquesne Light that would require their offices to investigate.

Customers can file a complaint against a utility company by calling PUC's Bureau of Consumer Services at 1-800-782-1110.