Dear AU Community,

As part of our ongoing support of campus facilities, we want to inform you about a time-sensitive project that will occur during winter break. The electricity, heat, and water on both Main campus and East campus will be turned off on December 27 and 28, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. each day. Our electricity provider, PEPCO, will conduct major repairs to their system and we will simultaneously address some immediate needs in our own electrical systems. The dates are selected by PEPCO, so we are planning our work on these important repairs during this window of time. Fortunately, work will occur while the university is closed for winter break when we typically have the lowest level of activity and people on campus, so this is the best window for minimal disruption.

However, we understand that we still have activity during this time and some segments of the community will be affected by the outage. We are working with the departments that will directly be affected by this outage and continue to explore whether other parts of the university need to be informed. During the outage, there will only be emergency power to the buildings for emergency egress lighting. All fire and life safety systems will be active. There will not be lighting, heat, or water at the times and days listed above. We will preheat the buildings the night before the outage, and we will restore all services both evenings when work is completed for the day.

I understand this will be an inconvenience, but this is a critical update that will help us keep the power grid reliable in the future. Please reach out to me directly if you have any questions or concerns. My email address is vharkins@american.edu.

Thank you.

Vin Harkins 
Assistant Vice President of Facilities Management