Got The Power: How Does BGE Handle Outages Following Extreme Weather Events?

Overachieving is not always good. In the case of a severe weather event — such as Storm Riley, the multi-day stretch of high winds that swept the northeast in early March — overachieving means nobody is really prepared for it, and even though Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) tries to plan ahead to keep outages to a minimum, it’s not always as easy as it seems.

“This storm overachieved every forecast that was out there,” said Ron Carstens, director of distribution system operations for BGE. “Typically, in a larger event like a hurricane, we would have time to track the forecast and, based on the forecast, set our storm plan in motion that would allow us to bring in crews externally. With storms like this, we didn’t have a chance to bring in crews ahead of time.”

For some of BGE’s customers, especially those in Pasadena — where older neighborhoods mean more aboveground wiring — the problems presented by severe weather, either winter or summer, can mean extended periods of time without electricity.

For some residents, such as Doreen Munday who lives off of Solley Road, the outage lasted only 24 hours. “I felt lucky because some were out a lot longer,” she reflected. The only frustration she had was that after she reported the outage, which was caused by a tree that fell across Solley Road, she could not get an estimated restoration time on the website. “It just said, ‘Your power outage has been reported,’ but it didn’t give any updates.’”

Other residents had more trouble. Craig Hammaker lost power for a week, and because his home is on a well, no electricity meant no water either. His biggest frustration was lack of communication from BGE. “We are in a wooded area, but we never saw a truck or do an assessment until the evening prior to it being restored, and it was fixed 48 hours after the estimated time frame,” he said, adding, “They really dropped the ball on that one.”

In the case of events like Riley, which continued with winds up to 50mph for several days, BGE can be delayed from doing work because of the danger it presents to workers. “[Riley] continued for two straight days, and on many days, we weren’t able to go up in the buckets,” said Justin Mulcahy, communications manager for BGE. “Once it became apparent to us that this storm was overachieving, we mobilized very quickly and we were unprecedented in the number of crews we brought in from across the country.”

When severe weather affects a large portion of BGE’s customers, it becomes an “all hands on deck” situation, and all staff members within the company have a storm role to help get power restored. Riley required BGE to bring in about 1,300 additional contractors from other states and even as far as Canada. “It was definitely an unprecedented storm,” Mulcahy added. “I called it a winter hurricane.”

Local BGE employees can attest to how demanding these weather events can be. “During the last snowstorm in March, I hadn’t seen my husband for more than 10 minutes a day for over a week, and my kids were obviously miserable because of it,” said Courtney Zacharski, whose husband works for BGE. “I can’t tell people to stop complaining; I would be too if I didn’t have power for days — it sucks! But please don’t blame the men trying to fix it. If you see BGE, or another utility company, get them some food or something to drink and thank them! … Crews from other states, even Florida, came in to help. So it isn’t like they took their good ol’ time and didn’t care.”

To prevent power outages — particularly extended ones such as what Hammaker faced — BGE does regular reliability work. Currently, Anne Arundel County is receiving an update in infrastructure along Jumpers Hole Road in Severna Park. But community members shouldn’t expect to see their electrical wires moved underground any time soon, according to Carstens. “It would be very disruptive to the street or people’s yards,” he said.

In addition to moving all the wires underground, such an undertaking would require going into people’s homes to reconfigure the feed to the meter. It would also require more work on the occasions when there are outages because it is harder to go underground to locate the source of the problem.

Although the worst of winter weather is over, hurricane season begins in June, and BGE encourages all its customers to be prepared with a contingency plan and supplies such as batteries, water, nonperishable food and cash. Customers can also follow BGE on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on when to prepare for outages, such as during major storms.

“Nobody wants to be out at all,” Mulcahy said, “but we want people to know what they could be facing.”