As of 9 p.m. Thursday, January 6, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) has substantially completed power restoration in Calvert, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s counties. Remaining outages in Charles County are expected to be addressed by Friday evening.
Tom Dennison, SMECO spokesperson, said, “We are winding down and restoring service to the remaining customers who are without power. The outages that began on Monday have been addressed in Calvert, Prince George’s, and St. Mary’s counties along with some additional outages that have occurred since then. At the peak, we had more than 1,000 outage incidents on Monday. This evening and tomorrow, we will be working on the remaining 72 incidents to restore service to the 850 customers without power.”
An outage incident can be an open switch that affects two homes, a tree on a line that affects 100 homes, or a downed feeder that affects 1,000 homes. Dennison continued, “We have dozens of crews working in Nanjemoy, which was particularly hard-hit. Crews are making repairs span by span because of the many trees in the area. In addition, we are under a winter weather advisory for tonight, and we are prepared to respond to additional outages if snow accumulates overnight.”
SMECO’s outage map will show an incident-specific ETR once a crew determines how long the repair will take. The status of SMECO’s power outages, helpful information, and outage reporting link are available at smeco.coop/outage.
As of 12:15 p.m. Thursday, January 6, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) has about 1,626 members without electric service following Monday’s snow storm.
Tom Dennison, SMECO spokesperson, said, “At the peak, we had more than 1,000 outage incidents on Monday. This morning, we have whittled that number down to 212. An outage incident can be an open switch that affects two homes, a tree on a line that affects 100 homes, or a downed feeder that affects 1,000 homes. With 1,626 customers out and 212 incidents remaining, you can easily determine that for every repair that needs to be made, on average, only a few customers will have service restored.”
Dennison continued, “Normally, when we get to this point after a storm, the most difficult and least accessible areas need to be addressed. In some cases we may need to replace a pole, which takes several hours, or we may need to make repairs on a line that is not near a paved road. We are working to make as many repairs by tonight as possible. SMECO’s outage map will show an incident-specific ETR once a crew determines how long the repair will take.”
The status of SMECO’s power outages, helpful information, and outage reporting link are available at smeco.coop/outage.
As of 8 p.m. Wednesday, January 5, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) has about 2,468 members without electric service following the storm that hit the area on Monday.
SMECO spokesperson, Tom Dennison, said, “Our SMECO crews and our contractor crews are working to restore electric service to the remaining areas without power. We have about 298 outages in St. Mary’s County and 509 outages in Calvert County. In Charles and Prince George’s counties we have a total of about 1,661 outages. Some of these customers will have power restored tonight, while others will be addressed Thursday.”
Dennison added, “We always stress the importance of safety, but when our personnel have been working long days in cold weather, working safely is paramount. Although line crews work in dangerous conditions and their jobs are physically and mentally demanding, we know how important it is for our members to have their electric service restored. We are in the home stretch and expect that nearly everyone will have power by Thursday night, except for some areas which are difficult to access.”
The majority of outages have been caused by heavy snow on limbs and trees, which crews must remove with chainsaws before repairing power lines. Broken cross arms and poles are also a common cause of outages.
The status of SMECO’s power outages, helpful information, and outage reporting link are available at smeco.coop/outage.
