Photo by Adam Fagen

Credit Pepco for planning ahead this time. With the D.C. area waking up after a day in which Hurricane Sandy battered the region with high winds and constant rain, only about 21,000 of the power utility’s customers are in the dark.

Pepco spokesman Clay Anderson says that across the company’s service area, power outages during the worst of the storm peaked at 41,000. This morning, there are about 3,360 outages in the District, 4,900 in Prince George’s County and 13,000 in Montgomery County.

“We were expecting there to be considerable outages,” Anderson says. “We were fortunate.”

The outages from Sandy are considerably fewer than those caused by a June 29 derecho storm, when as many as 483,639 Pepco customers lost power, with many not getting their lights turned back on until a week after the storm.

But although Pepco crews were out for part of yesterday and are working this morning, it won’t be until later this afternoon until the company can give its customers accurate estimates of when their power will be restored. Anderson says Pepco’s entire staff has “storm roles,” in addition to the 1,400 crew members committed by electric utilities from elsewhere in the country.

Pepco dispatched representatives to the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency’s operations center as well as emergency operations bureaus in both Maryland counties. Communication with civic officials, it turns out, is appreciated. (Yesterday, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said that he had his “boot up Pepco’s backside” as Sandy approached.)

“One of the lessons learned from this storm is to have communication and keep that communication as transparent as possible,” Anderson says.

Elsewhere in the greater Washington area, Dominion Electric is reporting 103,304 customers without power in Northern Virginia, while BGE reports 192,433 customers in the dark following the worst of Sandy’s storming.