Pepco Self-Assessment Defends Storm Response
Pepco's recently released report on outages following last month's storm is mainly in defense of the company's response.
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Pepco has released a report largely defending its response to outages caused by last month’s derecho.
According to the report, at its peak, the storm caused power loss to over 483,639 Pepco customers, including 252,018 in Montgomery County and 158,210 in Prince George’s.
One week later, the report shows 4,411 Montgomery County Pepco customers were still without power, as were 424 Prince George’s customers.
It took Pepco nearly 10 days to fully restore power to all its customers. That occurred at 4:30 a.m. on July 8, according to the report.
Read the full report PDF on the right.
In the self-assessment, Pepco defends its response, writing that forecasts did not predict that the storm would hit the area hard, but “when the Derecho crossed the mountains intact, Pepco mobilized quickly, calling on both internal and external resources to respond to the storm.”
But The Washington Post reports that Pepco's assessment may only further frustrate customers who felt the utility underperformed.
“It’s more excuse-making,” Del. Tom Hucker (D-Montgomery), told The Post. “The problem is not the system or the expectations of customers. The problem is Pepco.”
The report also addresses the utility company’s communications with customers and government officials throughout the week, as well its inability to provide accurate estimations for power restoration.
The company wrote that it recognized “significant additional work remains to be done” to provide better and earlier estimates.
In defense of Pepco's communications efforts, the report includes multiple examples of news releases and media advisories and cites eight daily conference calls with government officials.
However, Pepco’s telephone report shows that between June 29 and July 8, the number of incoming calls to Pepco was at its peak of 273,912 on June 30, and of those calls, 217,472 were handled by the high volume call answering system, compared to 24,626 handled by representatives.
Officials in multiple jurisdictions, including Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner and executives in both Montgomery and Prince George's counties, have publicly criticized the Pepco response on numerous occasions.
According to the Maryland Public Service Commission, a public hearing focused on Pepco’s response following the storm is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 7 in Rockville.
The hearing will take place in the Montgomery County Council office building at 100 Maryland Ave. at 7 p.m. Residents who want to speak at the hearing should register that evening at the council office building.
Do you think Pepco's assessment is accurate?
Michael Smith
9:26 am on Wednesday, August 1, 2012
How about the media, does the media feel it is fairly criticising pepco? How about listing some facts with each story of Pepco crying victim?
Pepco makes over $100 MILLION in Profits a year.
Pepco is the most hated company in America
Pepco spends less than ANY other power company on infrastructure, repairs, and equipment.
Pepco has more outages than ANY other power company in the history of the US.
Pepco increases rates to pay for infrastructure.
All of this boils down to corporate executives lining their pockets and those of their families and leaving Maryland out to dry.
Does Pepco's assessment also think they should make more in PROFITS and that the ratepayers should have to pay more to ensure proper infrastructure investments?
As a business owner it sickens me to open the Pepco bill, because it's literally getting to be one of the biggest expenses anyone has in this county.
Pepco CEO Joseph Rigby needs to be dragged through the mud and any executives of Pepco AND their families need to publicly shame them into doing the right thing.
The Financial reports speak for themselves, over 100 million a year in PROFITS and they want rate increases.
http://www.councilmemberriemer.org/2011/01/pepcos-shocking-profits.html
Getting sick of their PR commercials, Pepco needs to come clean and admit they put profit before the good of the county.
dcr20854
12:00 pm on Wednesday, August 1, 2012
I am appalled by:
1. The outage itself--that one storm took out HALF OF PEPCO'S CUSTOMERS. It's as bad as the recent outage in India, that took out half the customers.
2. Their slow response to the outage.
3. The lack of real information from PEPCO about expected restoration dates during the repairs
4. Their constant self-congratulation during the repairs, while out of service customers sweltered in the dark
5. And now the crowning glory, they pat themselves on the back for this fiasco
I'd like to see our feckless PSC levy a fine on them that's commensurate with the damage their negligence has caused. Certainly it needs to be in the tens of millions, enough to take a serious chunk out of their profits. And they need to have specific goals to report on causes of outages and make major changes or face another fine of the same size--not at the next outage, but if they fail to make the needed improvements quickly.
My expectations? That the PSC may give PEPCO another slap on the wrist. It's time to replace the entire PSC and put a responsible public servant in charge. I nominate Roger Berliner, Chair of the County Council, a public utility lawyer, who really understands the issues and has been outspoken in his dissatisfaction with PEPCO.
Or we could just rename them the Pakistan Electric Power Company or just POOPCO and let things continue as they are....
Laura Bach
12:22 pm on Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Pepco did not restore all power to it's customers by 4:30 am on 7/8. We got our power turned on Monday, July 9th, only after I called & threatened to call Fox News and have them come to my house to show them what had not been done by Pepco that someone was dispatched within the hour. We had no power for 10 days. That is unacceptable under any circumstances.
Delia Tetelman
1:52 pm on Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Ask Bloom energy to offer retail to get us off the grid! http://www.bloomenergy.com/contact/residential/
Jim Burnetti
7:22 pm on Thursday, August 2, 2012
Did they post the assessment on their web site, where they posted the totally unreliable information about how they were addressing the outage? While out of state workers were on a pole in front of my house, their web site said the cause of my outage was not assessed, unknown.