BGE, Pepco have struggled with recent storms because they consider them extraordinary
By Brian Frosh and Jim Rosapepe
(Baltimore Sun) - Whether or not they accept the scientific evidence that climate change is man-made, Maryland businesses and families with electric lights know that climate change has already had a dire economic impact on our region.
Unprecedented weather extremes have pummeled our state and power distribution system. Crippling storms and heat in the summer and snow storms in the winter, previously rare in Maryland, have become commonplace.
Such extreme weather events dramatically increase the risk to Maryland’s old-fashioned electric utilities, which were built and are managed for a 1950s economy — and climate. In the past several years, increasingly frequent and ferocious storms have repeatedly knocked out power for dangerously long periods.