Delmarva Power amassed more than 600 personnel to work around the clock to repair the extensive damage to the local energy grid and restore service to customers affected by the severe weather and thunderstorms that impacted its service territory throughout Delaware and Maryland late Tuesday evening.
As final outages were totaled, the number of Delmarva Power customers impacted by severe weather was approximately 24,000, a decrease from earlier estimates of more than 32,000.
The contingent of resources included Delmarva Power field and support personnel and local contractors. Delmarva Power also received support from crews based at its sister Exelon companies, Atlantic City Electric and PECO in Philadelphia.
“I want to express sincere gratitude to our customers for their patience and understanding, especially throughout periods of extreme heat this week,” said Doug Mokoid, Delmarva Power region president. “Our crews, along with crews from our sister utilities who joined our efforts, worked around the clock to get customers restored safely and as quickly as possible. We are extremely grateful for the intricate planning, outstanding teamwork and skills of all our employees, contractors and other personnel, which was essential to get our customers back online.”
As with all storm responses, Delmarva Power took a systematic approach, prioritizing repairs to equipment that would restore power to the greatest number of customers first. In the first 24 hours, crews focused on addressing life-threatening, safety and health situations, assessing the damage, and completing repairs to transmission equipment. Crews then focused on addressing main distribution lines serving large numbers of customers. The final stages were the most labor intensive and included completing repairs to secondary lines serving neighborhoods and service lines to individual homes and businesses.
The extensive damage made restoring service to customers especially complex. Responding to the storm required a significant amount of tree work by arborists who had to remove damaged and downed trees from equipment before repairs could be completed.
Storms like these demonstrate the critical importance of the reliability enhancements Delmarva Power has been implementing across its service area to help reduce outages and improve the resiliency of the local energy grid. This effort includes modernizing infrastructure, such as replacing aging wood poles that are more vulnerable to storm damage with stronger, state-of-the-art steel utility poles capable of withstanding winds up to 120 mph, and adding greater automation on the local energy grid with new substations and equipment. For more information on reliability enhancement projects across Delmarva Power’s service area, visit delmarva.com/Reliability.
This is also a timely reminder for communities to be prepared for severe weather and other emergencies. To help customers plan and prepare for an emergency, Delmarva Power offers the following tips:
Keep a flashlight with fresh batteries on each floor of your home.
Identify an alternate location for you and/or your family in case of an extended outage.
Check on elderly neighbors and relatives.
Review the manufacturer’s instructions for safe operation of your generator. Do not connect a generator directly to your home’s wiring. Never use a generator indoors or any enclosed area.
Follow the advice of local emergency management officials.
Stay away from any storm damaged electrical equipment, especially downed lines. You should always assume downed lines are energized. Report a downed wire immediately by calling 800-898-8042.
To learn more about Delmarva Power, visit The Source, Delmarva Power’s online newsroom. Find additional information by visiting delmarva.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/DelmarvaPower and on Twitter at twitter.com/DelmarvaConnect. Delmarva Power’s mobile app is available at delmarva.com/MobileApp.
Source: Delmarva Power
