Does Manassas Hold Answer to Power Problem?

Living in Manassas City has its perks. And one of them is that the city has its own electric supply.

Most Manassas residents may have experienced their lights flickering a bit during Hurricane Irene and Manassas City Public Works Director Mike Moon reported nearly in the Weems and Point of Woods neighborhoods overnight Saturday due to downed trees at the peak of the storm.

But by mid-day Sunday,  power had been restored and everything was back on in Manassas.

have not had to deal with wide-spread, long outages or food spoiling in their refrigerators like many others in the greater D.C. area.

That's because, according to Deputy Electric Director Gregg Paulson, 85 percent of the power supply system is under ground. In addition, the city has a backup generation system that can be tapped into during peak demand times to keep prices lower than what Dominion and NOVEC customers pay.

Pepco was reporting nearly 17,000 outages as of 11 a.m. Tuesday—two days after the storm hit— with 3,500 of those in Montgomery County alone.  In Manassas, there's none.

Earlier in the year, Fox News reported Montgomery County officials in Maryland had begun discussing the possibility of adopting a municipal electrical supply company like Manassas has to replace Pepco, which has come under fire recently for its lack of reliability.

Maybe it's time for our neighbors to seriously consider if a municipal power company would benefit its residents like it has here in Manassas for nearly 100 years.