Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is urging state utility regulators to impose penalties on Pepco for poor reliability.
O’Malley’s plea, which he described in a letter to the Maryland Public Service Commission, echoes the requests of other Maryland lawmakers who have vowed to reform Pepco’s reliability.
“Last week’s hearing made clear that Pepco’s performance is far from acceptable,” O’Malley wrote, referring to the commission’s Aug. 17 hearing that kicked off its investigation into Pepco’s quality of service. “We can no longer accept that utilities are trying their best; we must demand safe and reliable electric distribution service and responsive and meaningful customer communication as measured by objective standards.”
Pepco customers experience more outages than any other consumer in the state, officials learned at the Aug. 17 hearing.
O’Malley urged the commission to establish reliability standards for all Maryland utilities and draw up metrics to measure progress — a plan Del. Brian Feldman, D-Bethesda, championed last week.
O’Malley did not specify what type of penalties the utility company could face should it fail to meet new requirements. Feldman’s plan would slap fines on Pepco for missing certain milestones in improving reliability.
The Public Service Commission is holding another public hearing on Pepco at 6 p.m. on Monday at the Montgomery County Council Building in Rockville.
