A three-and-a-half hour power outage in the Westbard area of Bethesda Sunday once again put the weakness of Pepco's grid in that area under scrutiny. Power went out to more than 300 customers of the utility at 3:36 PM yesterday. There was no inclement weather in the area at the time. Power was restored around 7:00 PM.
It had been known for several days in advance that severe weather would strike on Sunday, yet it appeared that no additional crews had been called in to assist, as it took several hours for one to be assigned to the Westbard outage. At least 37 people were killed by the same storm system in other states, underlining the real potential for disaster here.
The Westbard area has experienced repeated brownouts and short power outages since 2017, which have posed a major threat to appliances and devices plugged in or operating during the incidents. It is unclear if the reliability issues are related to the redevelopment construction work taking place on Westbard Avenue and Ridgefield Road, Maryland's severely-reduced electric generation capacity after leaders forced the closure of 8 power plants, or Pepco equipment failures.
7 comments:
Robert, extended power outgages are never acceptable. But I will say in my Bethesda neighborhood, Excelon Energy, having taken over PEPCO, has made significant improvements and capital investment over recent years. Our power used to go out all the time and certainlly would have with the wind over the weekend. But now, the only time our neighbor's fancy, whole-house generators go on is during their monthly test. No need to spend $$$ on something that's quite literally never used. At least not anymore.
"There was no inclement weather in the area at the time."
What are you talking about? The wind was crazy yesterday. Quite a few trees down and outages reported.
JAC, this has been a more localized problem in the Westbard area. I would say Pepco has greatly improved, in that prior to Exelon, there was a week long power outage every decade, and others that lasted for a day or two. These brownouts and blackouts are brief, non weather-related events, but wreak havoc on appliance motors.
3:31 - Robert, understood. Yes, I've had more than one standing freezer get fried from the power going out and trying to restart. Terrible for electronics as well.
There was a tree and power lines down at Gloster & Osceola road. I don't know if that was the cause of the large Westbard outage, or was one of the smaller (1 to 5 customers) outages at that time.
One of the other issues is the limitations put on Pepco/Excelon to perform tree/branch cutting. I'll give you that extended power outages are more uncommon today than the almost 7-days we lost power about 20-years ago.
Home generators are tested on a weekly schedule. JAC is making things up again, don’t know why?
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