Tuesday, February 1, 2011

One Thumb Up for Pepco

Pepco's been getting a lot of flak lately because of widespread and prolonged power outages. We'll leave the question of whether or not Pepco deserves this criticism, other than to note a Washington Post article from yesterday which reported, "A Washington Post investigation published last month found that Pepco's day-to-day reliability began declining five years ago and that Pepco ranks at or near the bottom in industry surveys of reliability. The average Pepco customer experienced 70 percent more outages than customers of other big-city utilities that took part in one 2009 survey."

We've called for burying power lines to make DC's electrical grid more reliable, but never mind. Here's what one American University Park resident reported about Pepco on the Communit-E email  list:
I ask you sheath the long knives for Pepco after you hear my story. A Pepco employee in a van was checking our street for tree limbs on wires and some such.  He knocked on my door to tell me the bracket holding my electrical wire had pulled away from the house and could come down.  He said, of course, it may take time to get a crew out.  Well I called anyway at about noon.  Hoped to get a crew by Tuesday.  At about 4 pm three contract guys show up.  They made a partial repair due to lack of a long enough ladder.  And promised to get Pepco out to finish the repair.  I will have to say I was floored and hope they get a gold star.  I suspect from their accents they came from West VA.  God love 'em.

1 comment:

  1. The promise that came with giving the utilities "permission" to become for-profit companies -- competition was going to save us thru lower fees, they would be more efficient -- has turned out to be a cruel joke, and Pepco is one of the best examples of just how misguided that marketization talk was.

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