INDIANAPOLIS — AES Indiana recently stated that an investigation into its response to a late June storm that resulted in thousands of power outages is “not warranted” after they claim the petitioners are making statements in relation to the event that are not accurate.

According to documents filed into the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, AES Indiana said that the petitioners’ allegations surrounding its reliability report being late is “wrong,” as well as other claims presented by the petitioners surrounding its response to the June 29 storm.

“Joint Petitioners effort to paint AES Indiana as providing unreliable service and being unresponsive to this significant storm event lacks merit,” the documents said. “The Company’s filings corroborate the Company’s view that the requested investigation is not warranted.”

According to previous reports, the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor and the Citizen Action Coalition filed a joint petition last month asking for an investigation into AES Indiana’s processes and procedures into power restoration after a major storm impacted around 100,000 AES Indiana customers in late June.

“Customers deserve to have confidence in their utilities, they deserve to know they’re safe, they are reliable,” Olivia Rivera, a spokesperson for the OUCC, said at the time.

Officials with the Indiana AES responded at the time, stating that the storm’s damage resulted in a “multi-day restoration process.”

“AES Indiana safely followed procedures conducted in accordance with our established storm response plan,” the statement read at the time. “Being there when our customers need us the most, like during this storm, is something we prepare for year-round. AES Indiana will cooperate with any inquiry from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.”

In its initial response, AES Indiana said that while the late June storm was “the most severe storm to hit Indianapolis in many years,” they were “prepared to, and did address, the impact of this storm with significant resources per its well-established storm restoration plan.”

“AES Indiana engaged 600-700+ line crews, tree crews, underground crews, neighboring utilities and in-office support personnel who worked 24/7 on the multi-day restoration effort,” the response reads. “During the restoration, the company replaced 39 transformers and 53 poles. The company established an outage website to keep customers informed and otherwise engaged with the community to support restoration and identify and address concerns.”

While the petitioners asked for a formal investigation, AES Indiana claims that the petition did not cite any deficiencies in the existing process and did not allege that the company failed to follow the existing process. The document said that AES Indiana is already required to submit a report within 30 days after the conclusion of an event like the storm that occurred in late June.

In the petitioners’ response to AES Indiana, they claim that the company “mischaracterizes” the joint petition’s request. The purpose of the request was for stakeholders to have an “‘opportunity to learn from AES Indiana what efforts it took, both in preparation and after the storm, to mitigate damages and also the efforts taken to restore power’ and to ‘ascertain the practices and procedures undertaken by AES Indiana to address the causes of the loss of power and the timely resolution of power outages…'” as a result of the storm.

The goal is for the petitioners in their request was to gather information about the overall event. The petitioners questioned whether or not the practices, procedures and preparedness of AES Indiana were adequate in this specific event, and would be adequate in future storms.

The petitioners claim that the company filed its reliability report late and that the only required order the company is required to submit for this storm is on the related costs of the event, not on the company’s practices or procedures, the things that the petitioners are trying to get clarification on.

“The facts are not in dispute and speak for themselves,” the documents read. “It took (AES Indiana) longer than five days to fully restore power to its geographically small service territory. This is unacceptable. This fact alone warrants the Commission to examine the practices and procedures that led to that result. A Commission investigation would be the appropriate vehicle for that examination.”