PECO: No Plans for Rolling Outages

Despite information that short-term blackouts may happen in the area on Tuesday, a PECO spokesperson told Patch on Tuesday that there is no indication of that happening. 

The energy company employees have been calling around the area all morning correcting the misinformation.

PECO is not calling for any rolling black outs today, the spokesperson said, adding that the decision to shut power does not even come from PECO, but rather from PMJ Interconnections, the electric transmission grid operator that governs the grid in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

A spokesperson from PJM Interconnections told Patch Tuesday that their preliminary numbers from this morning show that they set a record for electricity use and they expect this number to rise. 

To conserve power, they are asking people to lessen their power use from about 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. During evenings there is a growth in power consumption. 

“I don’t want to raise the fear of the outages, but I don’t want to say that it won’t happen," the spokesperson said.

But when the outages occur, the utility company has pre-identified the areas that will be affected so they are not turning off something like a hospital. Power outages will not likely have an advance notice because it’s done as the very last step (ex: a large power plant shuts down). 

But if it’s done, it’d done on a restricted basis and only done to a small group of customers, whoa are then brought back and then another group of customers has the outage for a short time, according to the spokesperson.