Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) has been working throughout the day to restore electric service to members who were affected by weather-related power outages.
According to SMECO spokesperson Tom Dennison, “with a foot of snow or more in parts of SMECO’s service area, this winter storm has caused power outages throughout Southern Maryland.”
SMECO’s line crews, along with Sumter and Penn Line contractor crews, have been working to restore power in areas affected by outages.
In accordance with SMECO’s power restoration policy to make repairs that will restore service to the most people in the least amount of time, crews work to make sure substation feeders and major distribution lines are cleared of downed trees and limbs and are operational before making repairs to tap lines and individual service lines.
Dennison added, “This heavy wet snowfall has not only caused power outages, but it has made driving conditions treacherous and delayed line crews. Although we are working to restore service until late this evening, most of our crews will take a break overnight and be back on the job at 5 a.m. Tuesday.”
From 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. crews were able to restore service to thousands of customers by repairing 18 feeders.
Currently, 20 of SMECO’s feeders remain offline. As of 8:45 p.m., SMECO’s outage map showed more than 27,100 customers without power and more than 770 incidents.
As of 10:25 p.m., more than 790 incidents are affecting more than 25,000 customers.
Anyone can view the status of SMECO power outages, find helpful information, or report an outage on the co-op’s outage map at smeco.coop/outage.
