For Immediate Release
September 19, 2003, 6:00 p.m.

6 p.m. OUTAGE UPDATE

Record Outages Recorded on Pepco System

Pepco has restored power to about 40,000 customers in the wake of Hurricane Isabel which left 531,000 customers without service- the highest number to lose power in Pepco`s history.

As of 6 p.m., the following outages are reported on the Pepco system:

District of Columbia: 113,000
Montgomery County: 221,000
Prince George's County: 162,000
Total: 496,000 customers

Safety continues to be a top priority as crews work on extensive system damage that includes: at peak more than 1,000 wires down; 380 feeders lines locked out; five substations down; and more than 3,000 transformers out. The massive effort in each portion of Pepco's service territory indicates that it could be several days before everyone's service is restored.

DRY ICE DISTRIBUTION
Unprecedented demand from Pepco customers for dry ice has nearly exhausted available supplies. Pepco's distribution centers in the District of Columbia and Prince Georges and Montgomery counties in Maryland will close once they have handed out all their ice today.

Pepco had ordered 950,000 pounds of dry ice in advance of Thursday's storm, but our Baltimore supplier, the only area supplier, has been without power all day and cannot supply adequate quantities of ice by tomorrow.

During the six-day period following the thunderstorm outage in August, Pepco distributed 200,000 pounds of dry ice. Today, in less than 12 hours, the company handed out all of the 300,000 pounds it had on hand.

We are evaluating the dry ice situation and will not be able to distribute any ice tomorrow.

# # #

About Pepco: For more than 100 years, Pepco has served the people of the Washington metropolitan area with clean, reliable and low-cost electricity. Pepco, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pepco Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: POM), provides electricity transmission and distribution services to more than 700,000 customers in the District of Columbia and major portions of Prince George`s and Montgomery County in Maryland.

Point of Contact:
David Morehead