In an editorial in the Washington Post, columnist Robert McCartney questions whether Maryland should seek to bury additional power lines to help with blackouts.  As reported, the District government and Pepco have proposed a plan to bury 60 of the city’s most trouble-prone power lines.  The columnist further describes,

Storm-related outages typically affect more people and last longer in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties than in the District. Why isn’t Maryland doing the same? . . .Yes, Maryland regulators are studying a Pepco rate proposal that includes adding a surcharge to pay to bury some power lines. . . . It calls for putting just six so-called feeder lines underground, three each in Montgomery and Prince George’s. That’s one-tenth as ambitious as what the District is proposing, even though Maryland has more customers.

MACo featured local emergency management and energy resiliency issues at our last Winter Conference and has followed legislation on power outages and grid resiliency in Maryland. 

For more information, see the full story from the Post. 

For more information, see our previous posts, Counties Confront Power Outages, Snow, and Major Flooding in “Frankenstorm”, Local Emergency Response Takes the Lead at MACo Conference.

For additional information on Maryland energy resiliency policies, see the Maryland Energy Administration’s Grid Resiliency Task Force and the Public Service Commission’s revised Vegetation Management Standards.