Power Cuts Affect Wide Swath of D.C., Including the White House, Capitol
A dip in voltage prompted temporary power cuts to the White House, Capitol Hill, the State Department, and other parts of Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon.
D.C. utility PEPCO said in a statement that the disturbance that affected about 8,000 customers and left a wide swath of the nation’s capital in the dark was caused by an “issue” with a transmission line that occurred just before 1 p.m. on April 7. “We have crews onsite investigating the cause,” the company said.
D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency officials pointed to an explosion at a power plant in Maryland’s Charles County, which is owned by Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO), as the cause for the disturbance.
SMECO, however, said the incident began when there was a failure on a 230-kV line operated by PEPCO.
The U.S. Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, said there is “no indication” that the outages can be attributed to “malicious activity.”
The outages began around 12:45 p.m., leaving several people stranded in elevators and prompting some building evacuations, such as at the Wilson Building, which houses the offices of the D.C. mayor. District facilities with critical operation centers immediately switched to emergency back-up power, including the White House and several Metro stations. Power was reportedly on at several federal offices by 1:20 p.m.
PEPCO, Washington’s main power provider, recently publicized efforts to upgrade its power system to “make it more reliable.” It says that its work and commitment “has significantly reduced both the frequency and duration” of power outages.
“From December 2010 to January 2015, outages on feeders that we worked on as part of our Reliability Enhancement Plan decreased by 51 percent and the outages that did occur were 60 percent shorter,” it says.
Efforts include trimming trees, upgrading priority feeders, replacing aging infrastructure such as underground cables installed in the 1970s, and installing technologies that allows the utility to identify outages and isolate equipment failures.
—Sonal Patel, associate editor (@POWERmagazine, @sonalcpatel)