When your power goes out, FirstEnergy wants you to stay in the dark longer and perhaps even more often.

The corporation, which owns Ohio Edison (which services the Mahoning Valley), the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. and Toledo Edison, is asking state regulators to grant permission for its companies to extend the time it takes to restore service after an outage.

The request makes little sense to us, and it should fire up customers across northern Ohio, especially with electricity rates rising all the time. Why should customers pay more for less?

Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison also are asking that the number of “permissible outages” each year be increased. The term applies to reliability standards established by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

Cleveland.com reported on FirstEnergy’s requests this week.

“While the Companies have historically had strong reliability performance, they have faced challenges in meeting their reliability standards in recent years,” according to FirstEnergy. “In general, the Companies’ reliability performance has worsened since 2019.”

So, because Ohio Edison, Toledo Edison and CEI aren’t living up to state standards, Ohio should lower the standards?

Try that at your place of employment or have your kids pitch the approach to their teachers. We doubt that would fly in either instance.

FirstEnergy argues that its companies’ performance has been impacted by acts of God beyond its control.

“Since 2000, the companies have experienced significant increases in rainfall. Wetter ground conditions increase the likelihood of trees, including healthy trees, uprooting and falling over,” FirstEnergy stated in its filing.

FirstEnergy companies routinely trim trees to minimize the possibility of tree-related outages, but the corporation argues that many trees outside its trimming zones often fall and take down power lines.

That has been happening since the first power lines were strung in Ohio. But Cleveland.com reported that cities like Cleveland and Lakewood — which are among cities that have submitted filings to PUCO opposing FirstEnergy’s requests — maintain that many outages involved line failures, equipment failures or human error.

We’re not interested in pointing fingers as to why the power goes out. Like most customers, we just want service restored as quickly as possible. That’s an important part of the FirstEnergy companies’ job.

Reducing reliability standards and increasing the number of permissible outages seems like a bad idea — and not just because we can’t watch TV, surf the internet or charge our cellphones when there is an outage.

Customers can sustain a heavy cost if the outage lasts long enough and refrigerated or frozen food goes bad. Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? It’s no fun. More importantly, many customers rely on electricity to power medical equipment.

And then there is this: Since 2017, FirstEnergy has received more than $1 billion from customers, supposedly for reliability improvements.

And now it is asking PUCO to relax reliability standards. That math doesn’t seem to add up. We join the municipalities that are opposed to FirstEnergy’s requests and urge PUCO to deliver an emphatic “No!” when hearings begin Feb. 26.