BERLIN, Connecticut — With Tropical Storm Henri, Eversource predicted a high number of outages and some people may be in the dark for weeks. The company initially estimated roughly 1.25 million Eversource electric customers in Connecticut, between 50 and 69% could lose power and restoration efforts could last between eight and 21 days. It later scaled back on those estimates as the storm weakened through out the day.
Eversource President of Regional Electric Operations Craig Hallstrom said, “While we have a massive contingent of line and tree crews from across the country and Canada here and more on the way, customers should be prepared for lengthy outages. That said, we are singularly focused on our responsibility to restore power as quickly as safely possible for our customers.”
Eversource and United Illuminating have received criticism and fines after Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020. The August storm caused hundreds of thousands of power outages across the state and left some customers in the dark for more than a week.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority gave final approval earlier this year to a $28.6 million civil penalty against Eversource and a $1.2 million civil penalty against United Illuminating. The agency also has ordered profit reductions at both companies, which have defended their responses to the storm.
What is the process for restoring power?
First, the outage has to be reported.
To report an outage, head to Eversource or United Illuminating's website or call:
Eversource - 1-800-286-2000
UI - 1-800-722-5584
Norwich 860-887-2555
Wallingford 203-265-5055
According to Eversource and UI, their first priority is public safety calls from police and fire. Then they move on to clearing blocked roads and restoring power to critical facilities such as police and fire stations, hospitals, sewage and water plants. If the facilities are running on stable generator power, they may move lower on the priority list.
Crews then move to repair circuit backbones and lateral feeds, transmission lines and substations based on how many customers are affected by the repair. Following that, crews prioritize work to restore lines that will bring the most customers back on line first.
Eversource says restoring power to neighborhoods is a multistage process and every situation is different.
After the outage has been reported, damage assessors may go out to view the situation and determine what type of crew is best suited for the repairs and estimate how many customers can be restored.
A repair crew will be sent to do the work, and repairs may need to be done in a different area to restore as many customers as possible. In other words, if you haven't seen a crew on your street, it doesn't mean they aren't working somewhere else.
UI officials said, "In the past, the process to restore power is to restore critical facilities identified by our municipalities (they provide us with a top 10 list prior to the storm) and to do so, we have to first repair the backbone of our system, the transmission lines, substations and feeders to those locations. While this is going on, our damage assessor crews are sent out as soon as it’s safe for them to drive – and they identify the damaged equipment and our make safe crews are working to de-energize any downed wires and clear roads with towns. We build a work plan for our crews based on the damage assessment, and the crews will be assigned around the clock to work that plan until all customers are restored."
Eversource last year committed to trim and remove trees on as much as 4,100 miles of roadways. Eversource said, "The energy company will be investing approximately $72 million in tree trimming and hazardous tree removal to enhance reliability for customers throughout Connecticut."
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