If you ask people to come and air frustrations about Pepco, make no mistake: they will.

Montgomery County residents and officials came out in force Monday night to gripe about Pepco’s reliability (or lack thereof). They also pushed the Maryland Public Service Commission to make the utility company to do better.

Elected officials spoke during the first two hours of the public hearing, called by the PSC has part of its investigation into Pepco’s response to July and August storms that knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of county residents. Officials said the PSC should enforce performance-based rates, meaning the rates Pepco would be allowed to charge would depend on how reliable their service is.

“This county sometimes may be accused of overreacting," County Executive Isiah Leggett said, going on to tell commissioners, “the testimony you hear tonight is not from citizens who are overreacting.”

Residents then dished out the horror stores: downed lines causing 6-foot fires on front lawns; going without power for 10 days; power going out during days with sunny skies; elderly residents not being able to keep insulin; calling Pepco for answers and being mistakenly told power would be restored next month.

“I cannot count the number of times we’ve had power outages and I’ve had to throw away thousands of dollars of food," David Kenton of Rockville said. "We have to sit there and look right across the street… and they have power."

Harvey Klein was concerned about outages "on good days and bad, rainy days and fair. I could regale you with the number of outages we’ve had… It’s not an outage, it's an outrage."

David Cohen of Rockville has a daughter with autism and said “when our routine is disrupted, and we have to go elsewhere because of the power outages, she becomes very scared.”

The PSC had no answers. Instead, commissioners wanted to get community testimony to be used as part of an investigation into Pepco. It was just last week that the PSC ordered Pepco to hand over more internal documents detailing the company’s most problematic feeders.

Pepco isn’t sitting idly by. They’ve already unveiled their five-year improvement plan, although many county residents will have to sit tight for quite some time before they see changes on in their areas.

Residents in Prince George’s County will have their opportunity to speak out about Pepco on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Prince George’s Community College in Largo.