A Pepco technician fixing a line (stock photo courtesy of Pepco)

On Wednesday, November 11th, the local Twitterverse and email listservs lit up about homes being in the dark. People from Park View up to Brightwood and over to Crestwood and 16th Street Heights all commented that their lights were flickering on and off. What was going on?

“The flickering power that people identified were caused by weather-related events on Wednesday and Thursday,” said Pepco spokesperson Ben Armstrong. Wednesday was a windy day, and the power outages and flickering started in the morning around 12th and Buchanan. “There was a 30-minute outage at that location caused by a tree limb laying across three lines on a span,” Armstrong said. (A span is a length of wire between two poles.)

Electric service can be momentarily delayed if a tree limb or other obstruction touches a power line, Armstrong said. Throughout the day there were sporadic outages and flickering caused by tree limbs laying across, touching or falling onto the electric lines. Pepco said that flickering can be caused by the power briefly going out when contact with a limb happens, and then the system briefly suspends and then reconnects the power going through the line (the jargon is “self-heal”).

At 10pm Wednesday evening, a tree limb snapped and fell across two spans of power lines at Gallatin and South Dakota, pulling down the lines and shutting off power to customers in the area. At 3am, Pepco crews found damaged underground equipment in Brightwood (cause unknown but likely weather related) that also contributed to some outages.

Armstrong said that Pepco doesn’t usually know about flickering, only outages. He encourages customers to reach out to Pepco when flickering or other power outages or brown outs (a drop in power without fully losing power) happen.

“We have an outage tracking map that customers can check,” Armstrong said. Their smart grid and and smart meters can report some issues, and do assist with self-healing the system, but they may not show flickering conditions. “When that happens, we encourage customers to call and tell us.”

So… the flickering? Strong winds blowing tree limbs against power lines, says Pepco.

If you want to report an outage or check the status, you can visit their website or contact them via phone or their mobile app:

To report an outage or downed wire, call 1-877-PEPCO-62 (1-877-737-2662) or report and track through their mobile app or website at pepco.com/storm.
Customers also can text “Out” to 48710 to report their outage. (You must first text “ADD OUTAGE” to 48710 to sign up for this service.)
Download Pepco’s mobile app at pepco.com/mobileapp. (The app has resources to keep you informed during a storm, including an interactive outage map and estimates of how quickly power is expected to be restored.)
Follow Pepco on Facebook at facebook.com/pepcoconnect and on Twitter at twitter.com/pepcoconnect to get the latest information from the company.