Councilmember Trachtenberg Attends Maryland Public Service Commission Hearing on PEPCO Reliability

Duchy Trachtenberg joined her County Council colleagues in Baltimore yesterday as the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) initiated “a proceeding to investigate the reliability of Potomac Electric Power Company’s (Pepco) electric distribution system and the quality of electric distribution service that Pepco is providing its customers.” The Public Service Commission ordered Pepco’s chief operating officer and the company’s senior officers responsible for system reliability and construction of maintenance, storm restoration and customer service and communications to appear at a “legislative-type hearing” in the commission’s 16th floor hearing room at the William Donald Schaefer Tower at 6 Saint Paul Street in Baltimore.

“I have ongoing concerns about the reliability of the electricity system in Montgomery County,” said Councilmember Trachtenberg. “Too frequently, Montgomery County residents have had to suffer through extended interruptions in electric service, with serious impacts on public safety, public health, business operations, and their residential quality of life. At our recent hearing on these issues, I was astonished to learn that Pepco had not taken any remedial steps to improve system reliability following the devastating winter storms of earlier this year. This was an important opportunity to assess system weaknesses and to enhance energy security for our County. The fact that there were no ‘lessons learned’ and no remedial steps taken is inexcusable and demands investigation by the Maryland Public Service Commission,” she said.

The Public Service Commission announced on Thursday evening, Aug. 12, that it would begin the investigation after morning and afternoon storms that day left more than 90,000 customers without power. The Commission’s order stated the investigation was being initiated “because of the frequency, number and duration of the power outages experienced by customer in the Pepco service area and the apparent breakdown of adequate communication between the company and its customer during these outage events.” The Commission went on to say that it “finds it necessary to conduct an immediate investigation into the reliability of the Pepco distribution system and the quality of distribution service Pepco is providing its customers, including but not limited to its performance during and following severe storms, and a comprehensive examination of Pepco’s storm preparedness and reliability.”

The County Council’s letter of July 29th to the PSC asking for an investigation cited many of the same concerns the PSC identified in deciding to act. In their letter, Councilmembers wrote: “We are writing to ask the Commission to open an investigation into the reliability of electricity in Pepco’s Montgomery County’s service territory. Our residents and businesses have suffered an unacceptable number and duration of outages for many years, outages that have harmed public health, public safety and the County’s economy. As a distribution-only utility, the quality and reliability of Pepco’s service is exclusively within your authority. We ask you to invoke that authority to ensure our citizens of acceptable levels of reliability.”