(Dec. 11, 2014) More than 4,500 homes in Berlin will likely be without power at midnight Friday.
The town and Delmarva Power scheduled a temporary service interruption, lasting until 4 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 13, as the utility company continues to upgrade transmission lines in Worcester County.
“Our rebuild of a more than 50-year-old transmission line between Berlin and Ocean City is designed to improve electric service reliability in Worcester County,” Delmarva Power region vice president John Allen said. “We will make every effort to keep the outage as brief as possible. We also apologize for any inconvenience while this work takes place and thank the public for their patience and understanding.”
The infrastructure improvements include replacing the wooden poles holding transmission lines with 90-foot steel counterparts.
“They’re built to withstand hurricane winds up to 120 miles per hour,” Berlin Electric Utilities Director Tim Lawrence said. “They’re basically upgrading the transmission lines from [Berlin] all the way to Ocean City.”
Delmarva Power provided similar upgrades along Coastal Highway in Ocean City last year.
Berlin will use the outage as an opportunity to try out CodeRED, their new mass notification system, nearly a month before the first scheduled test in January.
“The reason we’re running a notification before a test is simply a matter of timing,” Deputy Town Administrator Mary Bohlen said. “We thought that the scheduled power outage was important enough that we needed to get that word out whether we’ve run that sort of test of the system or not.”
Bohlen said utility bills would contain information on the notification system, which citizens can sign up for online.
“As long as they pull everything out of their envelope they’ll be aware that the system is out there and that they can sign up,” she said.
The outage depends on the weather. Maryland disconnect policies mandate that gas and electric companies check the 72-hour weather forecast before disconnecting power. If expected temperatures are 32 degrees or lower, the utility cannot turn off the power.
For more information on CodeRED, visit www.berlinmd.gov and click on the CodeRED banner in the top-right corner.
The town and Delmarva Power scheduled a temporary service interruption, lasting until 4 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 13, as the utility company continues to upgrade transmission lines in Worcester County.
“Our rebuild of a more than 50-year-old transmission line between Berlin and Ocean City is designed to improve electric service reliability in Worcester County,” Delmarva Power region vice president John Allen said. “We will make every effort to keep the outage as brief as possible. We also apologize for any inconvenience while this work takes place and thank the public for their patience and understanding.”
The infrastructure improvements include replacing the wooden poles holding transmission lines with 90-foot steel counterparts.
“They’re built to withstand hurricane winds up to 120 miles per hour,” Berlin Electric Utilities Director Tim Lawrence said. “They’re basically upgrading the transmission lines from [Berlin] all the way to Ocean City.”
Delmarva Power provided similar upgrades along Coastal Highway in Ocean City last year.
Berlin will use the outage as an opportunity to try out CodeRED, their new mass notification system, nearly a month before the first scheduled test in January.
“The reason we’re running a notification before a test is simply a matter of timing,” Deputy Town Administrator Mary Bohlen said. “We thought that the scheduled power outage was important enough that we needed to get that word out whether we’ve run that sort of test of the system or not.”
Bohlen said utility bills would contain information on the notification system, which citizens can sign up for online.
“As long as they pull everything out of their envelope they’ll be aware that the system is out there and that they can sign up,” she said.
The outage depends on the weather. Maryland disconnect policies mandate that gas and electric companies check the 72-hour weather forecast before disconnecting power. If expected temperatures are 32 degrees or lower, the utility cannot turn off the power.
For more information on CodeRED, visit www.berlinmd.gov and click on the CodeRED banner in the top-right corner.