PSC staff: Most Maryland electric companies met 2024 reliability standards but flagged inspection and budgeting issues

Staff for the Maryland Public Service Commission presented its review of the 2024 annual reliability performance reports from the state’s five investor-owned electric companies during a July 10, 2025, public hearing.

Staff found the utilities met or exceeded eight of 11 performance standards in 2024 but identified repeated problems in a few areas that require follow-up. The presentation covered safety and service metrics, missed periodic equipment inspections, corrective action plans submitted by utilities, major outage event reporting, and the status of related Commission working groups.

Staff’s technical lead, Deandre Wilson, summarized the overall findings: “the electric companies met or exceeded a majority of the reliability standards,” while noting the most important exceptions. The staff filing was submitted to the docket on July 8, 2025, and staff told the Commission it would focus its oral briefing on where companies failed to meet standards, the companies’ corrective action plans, and the status of reliability and resiliency working groups.

Why it matters: the annual reports and staff review inform the Commission’s regulatory oversight of utility operations and feed into related rulemaking and rate-case proceedings. When utilities miss inspections or undercount equipment, customers can face increased safety and outage risk; when budgets diverge from actual spending, rate-setting and long-term planning become more difficult.

Key findings from staff’s review included: - Performance: All five utilities met the Commission’s service-interruption, downed-wire response and customer-communication standards and met vegetation-management minimums. Three utilities—BGE, Pepco and Delmarva—self-reported missed periodic equipment inspections. Potomac Edison did not meet the safety-related targets for 2024 and showed an upward trend in outage frequency and duration. - Inspections and corrective actions: Each company that missed inspections submitted corrective action plans; staff said it would recommend amendments for Pepco and Delmarva, including field checks, monthly progress reports to staff and more frequent internal audits of contractor work. Staff told the Commission it expects companies to complete missed 2024 inspections by the end of calendar year 2025. - Major outage events and MOE (major outage event) rulemaking: Staff reported that none of the companies declared a major outage event in 2024 but that several had major-outage-event days. Staff is leading a work group to propose COMAR revisions for major-event standards and filed a petition for rulemaking on June 23, 2025; the Commission extended the comment period and scheduled a hearing on the proposal. - Budget and capital trends: Staff noted that some utilities’ actual capital spending exceeded the budgets used when the Commission set the 2024 reliability standards; commissioners asked staff to provide more detail on storm-related budgeting and how storm response is reflected in company budgets.

Staff’s recommendation to the Commission was to accept the 2024 annual reliability performance reports as filed, accept most corrective action plans with the staff-proposed amendments, and require additional reporting where needed. Staff said it found Pepco’s remedial plans addressing abandoned-call rates and downed-wire response from the July 28–Aug. 1, 2023 event acceptable.

Staff also reported that eight of the 11 performance standards had been met or exceeded statewide and that long‑term reliability trends are positive for most utilities, though Pepco’s recent safety and reliability trends have declined. Staff concluded its presentation by offering specific, itemized recommendations for follow-up actions and filings.

The Commission and staff will use these annual reports and the working-group output to inform rulemaking and future oversight actions.