Here at Pepco, providing safe, reliable, and affordable energy is something we do every day. When Leslie Yilmaz, a Pepco Maryland customer, shared a photo of her 7-year-old son, Eli, and his drawing featuring his idea for an advanced outage notification system via Facebook, we knew we had to meet him. After experiencing a brief outage one afternoon, Eli sketched a diagram of a transformer along with a messaging system that Pepco can use to show outages instantaneously.

Given Eli’s creativity and interest in innovation, we invited him and his family to tour our ThinkSpace+ Innovation Lab at our Edison Place headquarters and invited leadership to hear his pitch. While touring the lab, Eli learned how we use technology and innovation to power homes and businesses every day, saw an overview of engineering and transmission planning, and even had a virtual drone flying lesson.

After the tour, Eli expressed how excited he was about his visit. STEM education is a core value of Pepco and Exelon. We are always looking for opportunities to fuel the minds of our future engineers. In fact, we contributed almost $300,000 for K through 12 STEM education and initiatives in the areas we serve.

We wish Eli and his family all the best and look forward to what other innovative ideas he will come up with next. Check out this clip from Eli’s visit to Pepco’s Innovation Lab.

Watch more of Eli’s story here.