County Council President Roger Berliner (D-Bethesda-Potomac) has been one of Pepco’s harshest critics, but even he had praise for its performance in preparing for and dealing with Hurricane Sandy last week.

Some constituents have even emailed Berliner, unhappy he has complimented the much maligned utility company for helping to minimize power outages in the county and returning virtually all electricity to those without it within two days of the worst of the storm.

“This is what we pay them to do and they did it well,” Berliner said Monday. “It wouldn’t be honest to not give them credit for doing good work to prepare.”

Pepco secured more than 1,500 line personnel from other states to help what was expected to be a long recovery process. The company had predicted perhaps at least 100,000 outages in its Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and Washington, D.C. coverage area.

Those numbers didn’t materialize. Instead, about 7,000 customers in the Bethesda, Chevy Chase and North Bethesda area were without power during the peak of the storm late Monday night, a relatively low number compared to outages from June’s derecho storm.

Berliner did say the days of preparation before Sandy hit the East Coast helped as well as the fact that the D.C. metropolitan region didn’t get the worst of the storm.

Pepco Region Vice President Jerry Pasternak was at the Council Office Building in Rockville to sit in as Berliner spoke about Pepco to the media.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that we had more boots on the ground in this storm. We had the benefit of tracking this storm for five days,” Berliner said. “Pepco I think did what it should do, which is to make sure we had people when we needed them. It was a combination of preparing well and being lucky and that was a good combination for Montgomery County residents.”

Berliner said the storm underscored the importance of creating a microgrid electricity system in certain parts of the county, part of the “Utility 2.0″ pilot he is helping to try to create.

County Council President Roger Berliner (D-Bethesda-Potomac) says Montgomery County can serve as a national model of a responsive and efficient electric utility operation, a far cry from the oft-criticized system of today.

To do it, the county would have to wade through the potentially difficult process of negotiating changes with Pepco, the privately-held utility company that provides most of the county’s electricity and that was once named the “most hated company in America.”

Berliner labeled Thursday’s Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee meeting on the topic as the opening act of a “Utility 2.0″ program.

“Here we have an investor-owned utility that has its own economic interests and a business model,” Berliner said Monday. “We need to change this. We need to experiment.”

Berliner, an energy lawyer who has taken a leading role after the June derecho left thousands without power, envisions the type of microgrid technology — solar power or other means that provide decentralized power to specific communities — that has served institutions in the county well.

Berliner cited the U.S. Food and Drug Administration campus in Silver Spring, which has its own microgrid, as an example. He claimed the FDA has never lost power.

Though he hasn’t given up on pursuing a public power option, Berliner was careful to point out “Utility 2.0″ is a separate process.

“This is not buying [Pepco's] system. This is modeling and piloting a very different kind of utility system because of its experimental nature. In fact, we need Pepco’s collaboration because if they are in resistance, this is going to be a problem,” Berliner said. “I have always recognized it is an uphill battle and therefore, I don’t want to put all my eggs in [the public power] basket. I’m proceeding along parallel tracks if you will.”

Thursday’s committee hearing will include utility representatives from across the country, including from Pepco, Berliner said. He hopes to have a recommendation for the pilot program prepared for Gov. Martin O’Malley by March.

“The technological challenges are not that great. We have a pretty good sense of the kinds of things that can be done,” Berliner said. “It is the regulatory and institutional arrangements that are so difficult to come to terms with. …We need to have an intensive process.”