More than 1,400 BGE customers lose power Friday during Maryland heat wave

More than 1,400 BGE customers lose power Friday during Maryland heat wave reports widespread outages during a prolonged extreme-heat period in Maryland. On Friday morning, about 1,400 customers of Baltimore Gas & Electric were without power as temperatures climbed into the triple digits for the third day. According to the utility’s outage map, 114 active outages were affecting 1,436 customers statewide as of 8:30 a.m., slightly above 1% of BGE’s 1.35 million customers. About half of those impacted were in Baltimore City. A BGE spokeswoman told the Baltimore Sun that the outages were predominantly caused by underground cable faults due to unusually high usage during the extreme heat, and the company increased staffing over the July 4 weekend, with crews working around the clock. The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning for the Baltimore area, with temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees and heat indices of 110 to 113. The outages came after a manhole fire at 4 p.m. Thursday in Charles Village that temporarily affected about 2,200 residents.