Pepco to D.C. Region: Drop Dead
Hey Pepco, what's your problem? Why is it we can't have a big snowfall without half your customers losing their power? LL can guess: it's not your fault, it's the trees'. Those stupid old trees!
Well guess what, Pepco: Plenty of other cities across the Northern Hemisphere have solved the riddle of having trees and big snowfalls without predicable power failure. Somewhere in the former Soviet Union right now, they're laughing at us, the nation's capital, 'cause we're too dumb to figure out how to keep the lights on whenever it snows. Does LL need to move to Minsk to keep his newborn warm? Last night, LL had to choose between keeping his family at a stone-cold powerless house, or braving horrendous roads to find some heat. Lucky for everyone, LL's son is a tough guy and did alright under a bunch of blankets. But that's a pretty crappy decision for a new parent to have to make because your crackerjack company doesn't know what a chainsaw is.
Here's a free science lesson for you: When a tree branch becomes weighted down with enough snow, it'll fall. And if said tree branch is hovering atop of power line, that means problems. So start trimming.
And don't give LL that line about how most of your power outages are due to falling branches from trees on private property, where owners are hesitant to let you play tree surgeon. That excuse smells about as bad as the semi-frozen diapers LL's kid was making last night. If you were serious about improving your wretched service, you would have started lobbying lawmakers and the public a long time ago for the right to trim any tree you need to keep the lights on. Or better yet—come up with some plan to keep reliable service despite all the trees!
Instead, all LL hears from you are excuses. So at the risk of sounding like Howard Kurtz last summer... Screw you, Pepco.
5:49 pm
AMEN
6:01 pm
To play devil's advocate:
before PEPCO can trip any trees, it needs approval from the city. However, residents usually throw a huge fit when PEPCO wants to do anything related to tree removal. For example just take a look at last year's fiasco in the Palisades. PEPCO wanted to trim trees as part of its reliability upgrade. A civil war almost ensued.
6:02 pm
Lived in Philly for 42 years before moving here this summer. Never lost power for more than 2 hours up there. First winter on DC, it was off for 18 hours. And my neighborhood in Philly had trees. Lots of them Pepco is a joke.
7:11 pm
I hate Pepco as much, if not more than the next guy, but they are addressing the issue. They are rolling out smart meters for every home and business, that will return power in minutes not hours. I just received my letter that they are will be installing them in my neighborhood in the next few weeks!
7:19 pm
Pepco's board just announced a dividend to their shareholders today.
8:21 pm
Why can't we bury our powerlines like civilized cities? Surely it would be cheaper in the long term than the incessant tree trimming and paying 350 hours of overtime to every worker each time we get a storm??
9:50 pm
Another snarky, sarcastic scribe who has all the answers. What a know-it-all. Perhaps you don't really know it all or what is needed or all it entails.
You probably know how to fix the economy, the environment, droughts, and peace in the Middle East as well.
10:00 pm
All I have to say is that late this morning I saw a Pepco worker wandering our neighborhood (on the Chevy Chase/Silver Spring line) and I was hopeful he was there to check out down wires. But no, he was just there reading meters. Seriously?!?!??!?!? I guess its not quite all hands on deck for Pepco when there's bills they need issued...
1:16 am
My friend works for PEPCO and gives me all the information about the problems that go on inside. Wednesday afternoon around 4 o'clock PEPCO sent all workers home and held only 3 extra crews. Thomas graham told channel 9 that PEPCO was ready with all crews. Same thing happened during last years storms. Then PEPCO 4 hrs later tried to call everyone back in as the number of people without power started to increase. Some PEPCO employees just made it home after a normal one hour drive took over 5. The problem starts with the management that runs PEPCO they could care less about restoring power and more about budget. Not one of them live in PEPCO service area. Things need to change.
9:04 am
Don't even begin to get me started on PEPCO. My girlfriend and her roommate received a $550 electric bill for last month (December). This is despite the fact that they have a 1000 sq. ft. apartment, have energy efficient bulbs, didn't even turn on their electric heat, and were gone for three weeks for the holidays during December. My bill for a similar place was $38. They have already insisted that "there's nothing wrong with the meter." Also, they somehow decided that their apartment should be billed the business rate, because it is above a medical clinic. If they don't fix it in a week I will go all Consumerist.com on 'em.
12:04 pm
As soon as I got home to my house in northwest Washington, a tree limb blew down the power supply. I called 911, reporting a possible live wire. The Fire Department came, the police came, and Pepco came. Within about two hours my lights were back on. The next day a road crew cleaned up the tree debris.
I figure I was lucky in a way because my outage happened early, and I was at home to report the tree limb down. Also, it was very hard to get through the PEPCO customer service lines, but I didn't need to because the 911 call authomatically called PEPCO.
I have been without power before, for long periods of time, and I know it is not fun (especially when I had babies and my elderly mother-in-law to take care of). But mother nature keeps reminding us that we only live on this planet, she is in charge.
3:37 pm
I live in Forest Glen and according to Pepco's web site, our electricity is not slated to be restored until Sunday at 11 PM. That will mean four full days with out power. Our house is already 45 degrees. We are freezing.
I get that mother nature happens, but as the WP article this morning revealed, Pepco made a bad situation worse by failing to ask for assistance and gearing up their crews. In comparison to Dominion and BGE, they have far fewer customers' power restored. Unbelievable!
And for those defending Pepco, I'm willing to bet you A) either never lost power B) got your power back on very quickly or C) live in the Baltimore region or in Virginia and don't have to deal with this crap.
7:31 pm
Falling limbs can bring down power lines. They cannot clog up phone lines, bring down websites, interfere with disaster management planning and cause poor customer service. The actual outages are only part of Pepco's problem: bad planning and worse communication are the rest. If I knew when my power would be back, I could at least make plans. "Maybe by 11 PM on Friday" does not help me decide whether to get a hotel room for another night.
11:57 pm
Pepco (the BP of utilty companies) sucks, pure and simple. Its current incompetence is news only because it's happening now. Pepco is getting worse every year.
12:07 am
A lot of cities also BURY their power lines.
12:21 pm
After a Delaware contractor finally got to work on our lights, a PEPCO truck drove down the street asking out of the window "got power?" when we said no he gave us the thumbs up; clearly had not heard what we said. Delaware guys indicated PEPCO never told them our power was out merely the line was on fire (it was!).
12:37 pm
You all remember that this storm actually encased the snow in ice, meaning that instead of flying off with the wind as it normally does, we had enormous amounts of ice AND snow stuck on our trees and power lines, weighing them down? That means that for every exposed surface, there was about an entire inch of liquid-equivalent water. We REALLY should be moving the power lines underground in the older neighborhoods, but I doubt any of you would be willing to help pay for that, would you? And we all know how we react when Pepco comes along with the tree trimmers. We don't want to lost our canopy! And it's understandable. As the DC are has the third densest tree canopy amongst major US cities (after Portland and Atlanta), we relish our lush, tree-lined streets (as long as you don't live in one of those desert-equivalent newer cookie-cutter McMansion developments).
9:18 pm
Forecasts call for freezing rain tonight. Rumor has it PEPCO's gonna cut our power now and preempt the storm.