PRESS RELEASE
Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) crews worked throughout the night Monday and all day Tuesday to restore service to all customer-members without power as a result of the recent storm.
The storm system that swept through the Midwest and into the mid-Atlantic and New England areas left thousands without power as rain and high winds brought down trees and power lines.
Power was restored to all customers affected by weather-related outages that began Sunday night. Damage from the storm was concentrated in the Charles-Prince George’s region early Monday morning, where more than 10,620 customers were affected. As wind speeds increased throughout the day Monday, nearly 1,470 customers in Calvert County and 5,930 customers in St. Mary’s County were left without power. All of the customers in St. Mary’s County had their power restored by 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. Service was restored to Calvert County customers by 4:15 p.m., and all customers in the Charles-Pr. George’s region had service restored by 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The rain and wind took down trees and limbs, which fell on power lines and caused most of the damage to the electric system. SMECO estimates that more than 47,000 outages occurred—some customers lost power on several separate occasions—as a result of over 825 separate incidents,* which ranged from broken utility poles and downed power lines to blown transformers.
Most significantly, two separate transmission outages occurred during the storm. Five substations in western Charles County were without power after a tree fell on a 66-kilovolt (kV) transmission line Sunday night at 11:45; power was re-routed and service was restored to 12,190 customers by 3 a.m. Monday. On Monday afternoon, the Valley Lee and Piney Point substations lost power for about two hours after a large tree fell on a 66-kV transmission line; power was restored at 3:30 p.m. In addition, the storm caused 42 feeder circuits to open, interrupting electric service to thousands of customers.
All available SMECO personnel and resources were focused on restoring power in as quickly and safely a manner as possible. SMECO line crews began making repairs early Monday morning. SMECO’s Call Center took almost 4,250 calls, and the Co-op’s automated phone system took over 9,750 calls.
More than 40 SMECO crews worked to restore electric service to local residents. SMECO vice president and chief operating officer, Ken Capps, commented, “Our crews worked diligently to restore power to as many people as quickly as possible following the storm.” Capps added, “we appreciate our customer-members for their patience while crews worked to restore service.”*An outage incident may be a limb on a power line, an open recloser, or a broken piece of equipment. An incident may cause an outage for one customer or many customers. For example, a downed feeder may be one incident, but it may cause an outage for one thousand customers.