Hundreds of Bethesda-area residents experienced short power outages each day for nearly two weeks as the regional power company Pepco conducted maintenance on a nearby substation.
Between April 14 and April 23, power went out for short intervals – less than five minutes – as work was conducted to ensure the substation that feeds energy to homes will be able to keep up with demand as summer approaches, according to a spokeswoman for Pepco.
The work was considered routine and power disruptions are normal, the spokeswoman said, but affected residents spoke out on social media frustrated by the repeated outages and lack of advance notification.
No further outages are expected, according to Pepco.
About 1,600 people receive service from the affected substation and “a few hundred” customers would have experienced the interruptions each time they occurred. Affected areas included Suburban Hospital and the Huntington Terrance neighborhood, Pepco said.
Christina Harper, the spokeswoman, said customers are encouraged to report any power outages to the company and request to receive updates about when power will be restored, but “in this case outages were so brief, by the time they reported it the power was back on,” she said.
“Pepco is working to ensure customers, large and small, have reliable energy service and will notify them should future planned service interruptions be necessary,” Harper said. “We’re ensuring ahead of these summer months when it’s really hot when we have increased customer load, the reliability is going to be there.”
Caitlynn Peetz can be reached at caitlynn.peetz@moco360.media
