PSC hammers Pepco on its blizzard response

State energy regulators hammered Potomac Electric Power Co. representatives Tuesday for their response to February’s back-to-back mega snowstorms that knocked out power for more than 400,000 of its customers.

The Maryland Public Service Commission asked the state’s energy companies to provide a rundown of their performances during the storm, given the number of outages that occurred. Regulators wanted to rehash what went wrong and what the utilities learned during the storms.

Pepco had the largest number of customers without power for the longest period of time, most of them in Montgomery County, where the company said the impact of the storms on customers was 600 percent more severe than in other Maryland jurisdictions. Many customers spent 72 hours without power.

Commissioners criticized Pepco’s slowness in asking for outside assistance to restore power from other utilities on the East Coast, compared to the speedy request from Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.

BGE asked for help on Thursday, Feb. 4, the day before the first storm hit, while Pepco waited until Saturday morning to put out the call.

PSC Chairman Douglas R.M. Nazarian noted that by the time Pepco asked for help from other utility crews, 100,000 customers had lost service in Montgomery.

“It seems like everybody else was ahead of you on this one,” Nazarian said.

But Stan Wisniewski, vice president of operations for Pepco’s parent company, PHI, said the company had already increased its internal capabilities and was assessing the strength of the storm.

He said the initial forecast was similar to the December storm that dumped about 20 inches of snow on the region, which did not cause major outages for Pepco’s 767,000 customers in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Washington, D.C.

Up until the forecast changed to a heavy dousing of wet snow on Friday afternoon, he said, Pepco was comfortable with its pre-storm planning. But Commissioner Harold Williams said he was not satisfied with Pepco’s preparations for the storm.

“It really appears you were caught with your pants down, to say the least, in regards to the storm,” Williams said. “You had reports of this storm coming about, and you were not prepared to deal with this particular storm, and I’d like to know why.”

Wisniewski said road conditions during the first two days of the storm were hazardous and made it difficult for crews to complete restorations quickly. He said it wasn’t until Monday that  county plows got to secondary roads, where many of the outages occurred.

Mary Scholl, legislative aid to House Majority Leader Kumar Barve, spoke at the hearing Tuesday to draw attention to the disproportionately high number of outages in Montgomery.

Scholl, a Montgomery resident who lost power for one and a half days aside from a “glorious three-hour” block of time in the middle, said she and Barve want the commission to figure out why Montgomery had so many more outages than other counties.

Commissioners also questioned the effectiveness of Pepco’s tree-trimming program, since fallen tree limbs caused 1.8 million hours of power losses for its customers. Pepco said most of the fallen trees and limbs came from trees not in its “right of way,” meaning trees that are not near power lines.

Barve, Scholl and other Montgomery residents who spoke said they believe that there is an underlying issue in Montgomery that goes far beyond trees and bad road. They said they did not know the identity of the problem, but suggested that the PSC examine the infrastructure to find a fix.

The PSC praised BGE for its tree-trimming practices and its actions throughout the storms. Although about 10 percent of its 1.1 million customers lost power, the PSC said the company restored service in a timelier manner.

BGE said in future storms similar to February’s, it would reserve more four-wheel drive vehicles, more hotel rooms for employees and have more employees on hand.