APRIL 7, 2015
An equipment failure at an electricity substation near the
St. Mary’s and Charles County line caused tens of thousands of power outages
across the D.C Metro area, including more than 20,000 in Southern Maryland.
The failure sparked a fire outside of the substation,
according to a SMECO spokesperson.
Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative spokesman Tom
Dennison said Tuesday that shortly before 1 p.m. there was a fault on the PEPCO
side of a connection point at the Ryceville station in Charles County.
According to a press release from SMECO, a Pepco
230-kilovolt transmission conductor located at SMECO’s Ryceville switching
station broke free from its support structure and fell to the ground.
The failure resulted in the loss of supply to SMECO’s
Ryceville station and the Hewitt Road station. The Pepco supply to the
Morgantown and Chalk Point interconnect locations was also interrupted. That
knocked out power from the Ryceville Road station to the Buck Hewitt Road station
in Lexington Park, the release stated.
Dennison said SMECO workers were able to reroute power
through the cooperative’s 230 kilovolt system in Calvert County and St. Mary’s
County. He said many customers were back on within the hour.
Just after 1 p.m., SMECO reported as many as 21,000
customers without power, more than 10,000 in Charles County, 8,650 in St.
Mary’s and a little more than 100 in Calvert.
D.C. homeland security officials said the failure in
Southern Maryland was believed to have caused a power surge that temporarily
knocked out power to the White House and much of downtown Washington, The
Washington Post reported, and by 2:30 p.m., homeland security officials both
locally and nationally said it appeared that terrorism was not an issue.
According to Charles County Volunteer Fire & EMS public
information officer Bill Smith there was a “massive fire” at the substation
that was burning at 1:30 p.m.
Smith reported the problem was that SMECO and Pepco share
power and firefighters were unable to take any action until PEPCO secured the
area.
“Because it’s Pepco’s right-of-way, it’s Pepco’s
responsibility to come down and fix this thing. SMECO cannot,” he said.
Dennison said there was no damage to any SMECO system during
the incident.
Pepco spokesman Sean Kelly tells WTOP that when the lights
went out inside government and other buildings, that's when the power flipped
over to backup supply systems. But in some cases, those backup generators did
not work, he says.
Kelly says Pepco will review its connections to various
power supply facilities around the region and he did not know why the outage
rippled to far from the Ryceville switching station.
SMECO President Joe Slater says that when the line fell
there may have been sparking, flames or electrical arcing and possibly a loud
noise, but there was no explosion. The line may have sparked a small grass fire
and a photo of the line lying on the ground shows burn marks in the surrounding
grass.
Slater says that there is no evidence of terrorism or
vandalism but says that the line simply fell due to equipment failure.
Most Pepco and SMECO customers have had their power
restored.
The U.S. Justice Department, the GSA and State Department
buildings were also without power. The White House briefly used backup
generators.
Dupont Circle Metro Station had no operating escalators and
13 other stations operated on backup power. Power has since been restored to
all Metro stations. However the outage damaged one of two available
escalators at the Bethesda station. Because the third escalator was being
replaced and not available, Metro closed the Red Line station until about 9:15
p.m.
Tuesday was partly cloudy with a chance of rain in the
evening, but no severe weather was reported.
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THE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM SMECO
Equipment Failure Results in Power Outages
April 07, 2015
Shortly before 1 p.m. a Pepco 230-kilovolt (kV) transmission conductor located at SMECO's Ryceville switching station in Charles County broke free from its support structure and fell to the ground.
This failure resulted in the loss of supply to SMECO’s Ryceville and Hewitt Road stations. The Pepco supply to the Morgantown and Chalk Point interconnect locations was also interrupted.
No SMECO equipment was damaged and all protective devices operated correctly to isolate SMECO equipment from the Pepco fault.
SMECO has rerouted power through our 230-kV system in Calvert and St. Mary's County to restore service. All SMECO customers affected by this event were restored by 2 p.m.
In SMECO’s service area, the Ryceville switching station is jointly owned by Pepco and SMECO. It houses SMECO facilities and Pepco facilities. Pepco’s 230-kV line serves SMECO at this station. The line that broke was Pepco’s 230-kV line.