Utilities Restore Electricity to 57% of Customers After Hurricane Irene
Utilities restored power in less than a week to about 57 percent of the customers who lost electricity after Hurricane Irene toppled trees, tore down power lines and caused flooding from North Carolina to Maine.
About 3.84 million U.S. homes and businesses have had power restored from an estimated 6.69 million affected by the storm, the U.S. Energy Department said in a report yesterday. Irene made landfall Aug. 27 as a Category 1 hurricane in North Carolina before striking New York the next day.
Power will be restored by Sept. 2 to the majority of customers in New York and Virginia, the states with the highest number affected by the storm, according to utility companies. For others, recovery may take longer as crews struggle to clear trees and debris and restore power lines.
It’s too soon to assess how utilities handled the storm’s damage, estimated by Standard & Poor’s to be in the tens of billions of dollars, said Scott Hempling, executive director of the National Regulatory Research Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“It’s too big, too idiosyncratic and too early,” said Hempling, who has directed several studies on utility storm recovery. “That’s something each state utility commission will have to look into once the facts are known, and right now, the people who have the facts are still busy pulling all-nighters making things work.”
‘Lingering’ Blackouts
More than 500,000 customers still lack electricity in both New York and Connecticut. “Lingering, localized” blackouts may persist for its customers into this holiday weekend, Long Island Power Authority Chief Operating Officer Michael Hervey told reporters yesterday.
“If our electric system were a person, we just got run over by a truck,” Hervey said at a press conference. Fixing the problem is complicated by the fact that “it can take as long as four hours to remove a tree so our crews can get in.”
Irene drew comparisons to hurricanes Gloria in 1985 and Isabel in 2003, which also struck the mid-Atlantic coast and New England. About 4.2 million customers lost electricity because of Isabel and 3.2 million from Gloria.
Utilities in the Northeast have requested 6,000 more linemen, said John Bruckner, senior vice president for National Grid Plc, which manages the power authority’s lines. National Grid will add 182 tree-clearing workers in the next day to speed access, he said.
Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED) said “nearly all” of its New York City customers will be restored as of yesterday and in Westchester County today.
‘Flooded Roads’
“Flooded roads, inundated manholes and littered and twisted tree limbs, trunks, and downed wires continue to hamper restoration efforts,” the New York-based company said in a statement yesterday. “Crews from utilities as far away as Texas, Colorado and Kansas are assisting Con Edison with restoration efforts.”
Storm-weakened trees with roots in saturated ground may topple and cause new power failures for days or months, Baltimore Gas & Electric, the utility unit of Constellation Energy Group Inc. (CEG), said in a statement yesterday.
About 2.85 million customers were without power because of Irene as of 3 p.m. local time yesterday, according to the department’s report. New York State, which had the largest number of power cuts, had about 7 percent of customers still without electricity.
In Connecticut, where the number of power failures exceeded Hurricane Gloria’s record in 1985, about 32 percent lack electricity, the most of any state affected. Connecticut Light & Power, which had more than 600,000 customers lose power at the peak of the storm, is bringing in more crews to clear trees and repairs lines.
The company, a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities (NU), said 389,660 of its customers still lacked electricity as of 3:30 p.m. local time yesterday.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net
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