I mentioned in the other thread, there were over 100K outages both south and north of us with Dominion (haha) and BGE. So I give Pepco some credit for better preparation this time around.

Pepco got lucky that the storm was not as severe here as predicted. Given their rates are 2-3 times higher than other areas, they have a lot of work to do to use that money they collect to give us the services we pay for instead of lining the high up exec's pockets.

I live in a neighborhood where we lose power when the wind blows. So I am no fan of PEPCO.

I wholeheartedly give them credit this time. Whether it's for the tree trimming or for the fact that they had called in reinforcement before the storm. They deserve a bit of credit.

I am happy. Last time we had a bunch of Virginians preening about how "I would never live in Maryland because of Pepco".

Personally, I would rather live in Maryland with no power than in Virginia with power out the wazoo, but there you go.

THIS!

Lets face the facts... PEPCO didn't do anything, it was a weak storm and trees stood strong. If we are to congratulate anyone, it should be the trees. Please go and hug a tree today.

My complaint about Pepco is not so much that the power goes out in a big event (hurricane, Derecho), but that it goes out in small events AND that it takes 7 days to get things restored with lousy communications along the way. They did seem to be much better prepared this time with lots of crews on standby. Hopefully those crews can now be diverted north where things are worse.

I agree that Pepco deserves some recognition. While it was a "weak" hurricane, there were strong winds (70 MPH in Potomac / 67 MPH in Germantown), so trees would have downed power lines if they hadn't been trimmed down.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What did PEPCO have to do with this? It was a weak "hurricane."

I have to agree. I think it was luck of the draw of how hard you got hit and not PEPCO.

I am no Pepco fan, not by a long shot, but I think they "deserve" a tiny bit of "credit" for basically clear-cutting entire swaths of DC and MoCo after July.

Actually, I'm not a fan of free-for-all tree killing either. But, I do believe there is a cause-effect relationship between Pepco's 1) tree cutting and 2) prep with out-of-state crews and the amount of households who kept their power this time.

Put another way, the winds of yesterday absolutely would've taken out more households 5 years ago.

I'll give props to Pepco. They've spent months trimming our area and we kept power. This is the first storm that our power stayed on and yes the wind gusts were strong.

Anonymous wrote:What did PEPCO have to do with this? It was a weak "hurricane."

I have to agree. I think it was luck of the draw of how hard you got hit and not PEPCO.

I am happy. Last time we had a bunch of Virginians preening about how "I would never live in Maryland because of Pepco".

Personally, I would rather live in Maryland with no power than in Virginia with power out the wazoo, but there you go.

Anonymous wrote:What did PEPCO have to do with this? It was a weak "hurricane."

To be fair, then, if it is a big event like the derecho, why does everyone blame Pepco? I don't think you can have it both ways. Pepco seems to have fared better than other utilities in the region like BGE and Dominion. I was pleasantly surprised.

Anonymous wrote:What did PEPCO have to do with this? It was a weak "hurricane."

Many of us lost power for days when the first snowflakes hit the ground in the Feb 2012 blizzard. You don't live here do you?

What did PEPCO have to do with this? It was a weak "hurricane."

Obviously there are plenty of Pepco customers without power, but given the scope of the storm, I'm surprised that we kept power, as did most of our friends and family in MoCo. So, did the storm just not MoCo as badly as expected? Or did Pepco really fix some things after the derecho?