“Our employees work extremely hard every day to provide safe and reliable service for our customers,” said Dave Velazquez, president and CEO of Pepco Holdings, which oversees the operation of Pepco. “These record results demonstrate the benefits of being part of the Exelon family of companies and sharing and implementing some of the best processes and procedures in our industry.” 

In the District of Columbia, the average number of outages decreased from the previous low, set in 2014, by 20 percent.  When customers did experience an outage, Pepco restored power an average of 37 minutes faster than in 2014.  In Maryland, the average number of outages decreased from the previous low, set in 2016, by 30 percent. And, when customers did experience an outage, Pepco restored power an average of 14 minutes faster than in 2016.  During the past five years, the number of electric outages has decreased by 37 percent in the District of Columbia and 49 percent in Maryland. 

Over the last five years, Pepco has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the District and Maryland to modernize the local electric distribution system and enhance reliability for customers. Each day work is being performed as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to further improve reliability for customers. This work includes inspecting existing infrastructure, trimming trees that could potentially impact the system, building new underground equipment, and installing stronger, tree-resistant aerial cable. The company also is using innovative technologies to improve system reliability, such as specialized equipment that can automatically restore service more quickly or isolate damage.

The company continues to share best practices with its Exelon sister utilities, Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd, Delmarva Power and PECO, many of which also posted record reliability performances in 2017.