Maryland’s utility watchdog announced it will investigate Pepco’s reliability, after several thunderstorms left hundreds of thousands of customers in Maryland in the dark up to six days.
The order, released after back-to-back storms pummeled the region Thursday, instructs Maryland Public Service Commission investigators to nail down the root causes for the frequency and duration of outages.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and the Montgomery County Council sent multiple letters to the agency in July and August demanding an investigation.
“I refuse to believe it is all related to the weather,” O’Malley said on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi radio show. “The wind does not blow seven times as hard and cause seven times as many outages in the Pepco [region] as it does in the [Baltimore Gas & Electric] area.
“People deserve an answer as to why that is, and the public service commission needs to step up and find that answer,” he said.
The agency said it has received numerous complaints from customers, who have lost power even on sunny days.
Beth Palys of Rockville is one of those who faced outages during nice weather. She wrote a letter to the Montgomery County Council expressing her frustration.
“Are we living in a third world country or in Montgomery County, Maryland?” she asked.
Montgomery County Councilman Roger Berliner told The Washington Examiner he will urge the PSC to set up reliability standards for Pepco and require the power company to reduce its rate of return if it does not meet those standards. As a public utility, Pepco’s profits — or “rates of return” — are regulated by the state.
“We can harden the system; we can have more redundancy in the system. We can have some portions of the system undergrounded. All of these thing are something that Pepco knows it can and should do,” Berliner said.
Pepco spokesman Bob Hainey said the company is already looking to trim trees more aggressively and put some power lines underground.
Pepco executives are set to testify at a hearing Aug. 17, during which agency officials will question Pepco leadership and set up procedures for the rest of the investigation.
In the District of Columbia, interim People’s Counsel Brenda Pennington has demanded an investigation from the city Public Service Commission, but agency spokeswoman Kellie Armstead said the commission, according to rules, must wait for Pepco to submit its outage reports before considering further action. The first report is due Aug. 23.
