Hutzell: Hunting for Maryland’s worst summer power outages in 2026

This may have been the first summer in 25 years at our house without a lengthy power outage.

If it wasn’t the same for you, don’t hate me.

Maryland is past its peak season for power outages. From mid-July to mid-August, thunderstorms, tornadoes and even derechos are a constant menace to keeping the lights on and air conditioning going.

Ahead lies September, when even bigger outages are possible. Tropical storms can claw up the East Coast, tearing out the power grid along the way.

No matter the type of storm or when the power goes out, the first question is always the same.

“When’s it going to come back on?” said Nick Alexopulos, a senior communications manager for Baltimore Gas and Electric.

Motivated by a blissfully almost-outage-free summer at my house, I wanted to know who had the worst summer in 2026. So I went hunting for an answer.

I talked with representatives of BGE and Pepco — both owned by Exelon — state regulators, consumer advocates and emergency management experts. I asked for data and reviewed annual reliability reports.

I had to learn the difference between SAIDI, the total duration of power outages a customer experiences, and SAIFI, how frequently outages happen.

So who has it worst? The short answer is, my neighbors.

“What I can tell you: Anne Arundel County was the hardest-hit area in our service territory this summer,” Alexopulos said.

Getting beyond that was harder.

People care more about the cost of power today than reliability.

“People are satisfied with reliability,” said Jacob Ouslander, who represents residential ratepayers before the state utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, as deputy people’s counsel. “There is much less satisfaction with affordability.”

But the two are linked. By industry standards, Pepco is No. 2 in a national ranking of utilities on reliability — keeping SAIFI low and SAIDI short. BGE isn’t far behind.

Last year, the commission approved spending less on reliability than the utilities proposed because of the potential impact on customers’ bills.

“The most important thing to customers is the assurance that we are working around the clock to make sure their power stays on and we are doing it at the lowest cost possible,” Alexopulos said.

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management tracks power outages, using utilities’ data to create two-week snapshots on its website. That’s because power outages are a consequence of natural disasters — storms.

Since May, the data shows, Prince George’s County has had the fewest hours without power in Central Maryland, followed by Baltimore County. Anne Arundel ranks third, tying with Baltimore City and Montgomery County, with Howard County last in the region.

But in Anne Arundel a few dates stand out.

A spring thunderstorm roared through on June 13. More than 23,000 of BGE’s 264,536 customers in the county suddenly were in the dark.

The county was hit again July 4, when 12,300 customers lost power. Another storm knocked power out for 21,656 customers on July 18 and 19.

In August, 80,000 outages in the county were scattered across the calendar. They were of various durations, but almost all were caused by storms.

The utilities know where their systems are most vulnerable. In April, they submit annual lists of the poorest-performing substations and feeder lines, along with proposed fixes, to the Public Service Commission.

BGE’s list had 14 entries in 2025, with two around the Hereford substation in Northern Baltimore County. In Anne Arundel, lines from the Crownsville substation made the list, as did Shady Side.

Pepco listed 24, with the worst identified as lines from the Toaping Castle substation in Greenbelt and at the Rossmoor South substation near Silver Spring.

BGE and Pepco cited trees and overgrown vegetation as the major cause of outages.

“If a tall tree falls over during a storm and topples power lines, breaks a pole, breaks a cross arm, rips power lines down, there’s not much you can do to prevent that,” Alexopulos said.

On Monday, BGE published an explanation of its trimming strategy in the trade journal T&D World.

It described it as “data-informed,” evaluating everything from outage history to drone surveillance to the tree species most likely to fall. The utility credits it with reducing storm outages by 10% to 15%.

The companies also use technical upgrades to shorten outages, often adding a remote switch that works like resetting a tripped circuit breaker at home.

“It is automated equipment that is installed across the electric system that can detect and clear faults automatically, without us having to roll a truck,” Alexopulos said.

Whether upgrades or more aggressive trimming is the best way to prevent outages is open to debate. Ouslander said utilities prefer physical improvements because there is a financial advantage over pruning.

If your power is out, waiting for the lights to come back on can be frustrating. If it goes out repeatedly, that’s maddening.

After we bought our 1964 split-foyer at the end of Annapolis Neck, outages were so frequent we learned to keep batteries stocked for lights and milk jugs of water to flush toilets. Eventually, BGE solved the problem by adding another line.

Some of the Crownsville lines were buried last year, the most expensive solution. Utility poles were marked for replacement around Greenbelt, and new technology was added at Hereford.

Improving the Shady Side line is taking longer.

It’s a rural area at the end of a long, tree-lined peninsula. Last year, the 945 customers along the line had an average eight hours without power.

BGE said in April it would inspect the entire line and resolve the problems.

Did it work?

Was Shady Side the worst part of the worst-hit county in the summer of ’26?

We’ll know in April.