Posted on Tue, Aug. 30, 2011
For the region's electrical utilities, Hurricane Irene is a storm for the record books.
Public Service Electric & Gas Co., New Jersey's largest utility, says the weekend storm ranks as its worst ever, with 700,000 customers who lost electrical service. That surpasses the 610,000 customers who went dark during a nor'easter that slammed the Garden State in March 2010.
Peco Energy Co., the Philadelphia utility, said that 500,000 customers lost power, ranking Irene among its five worst storms ever.
Both utilities, which had summoned reinforcement repair crews from as far as Florida and Missouri ahead of the storm, said service had been restored to about two-thirds of the customers by Monday.
The utilities said most customers would be reconnected by Wednesday, little solace to those whose refrigerators have become microbial hothouses of spoiled food.
"We were as prepared as you could be to respond to a storm of this magnitude," said Peco spokeswoman Cathy Engel Menendez. "What you're seeing now is just the sheer amount of damage that was caused."
But some customers might not see service restored until Friday as utilities struggle to reconnect remote or persistent trouble spots, or to dry out waterlogged substations.
"The problem with some of the remaining customers is flooding," said Bonnie Sheppard, a PSE&G spokeswoman. "You can't even get back in there to repair lines because streams haven't crested yet."
The U.S. Department of Energy estimated at least six million customers lost power as Hurricane Irene bullied its way north from North Carolina to Maine.
PJM Interconnection Inc., the regional grid operator that manages power systems between North Carolina and New Jersey, said the disruptions were confined to utility distribution systems rather than the high-tension transmission system that knits the utilities together.
'Enormity'
Several power plants shut down during the storm, PJM said, but the system has sufficient generation capacity to meet demand.
Although Irene did not pack as much of a punch as feared, its wide swath of high winds and torrential rains easily uprooted thousands of trees from soil saturated by several weeks of rain before the hurricane arrived.
Jennifer Kocher, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, said customers as far west as Carlisle in Cumberland County lost power.
"The utilities were prepared," she said. "It was just the enormity of the storm."
The PUC requires utilities to restore service first to priority customers - hospitals, nursing homes, emergency facilities, shelters, and schools.
After the priority customers, utilities are free to determine who gets repaired next, she said. Generally repairs that restore power to the greatest number of customers get done first.
'Step-by-step'
"Unfortunately for many the damage is so severe that you can't begin to repair the service until the trees are removed," Kocher said, "it's just a step-by-step process."
Engel Menendez said that Peco crews had to suspend repairs Saturday night during the peak of the storm for several hours until tornado sightings subsided. And even after the worst rains stopped on Sunday, windy conditions persisted, causing more damage.
"Even after the torrential downpours stopped, we had 24 hours of winds of more than 40 miles an hour, and gusts of up to 70," she said. "That's extremely damaging to an electrical system."
Peco deployed about 4,000 workers in the field, and PSE&G dispatched 6,000. Most were contractors or employees from utilities outside the region that respond to weather emergencies under mutual assistance pacts.
Atlantic City Electric Co., whose Jersey Shore territory absorbed the brunt of the hurricane, said conditions did not deteriorate so far that the utility had to shut service to the barrier islands.
The utility, which by Monday had restored service to roughly 100,000 of 140,000 affected customers, estimated power would be restored to all customers no later than midnight Friday.
In Radnor on Monday, where Peco work crews toiled feverishly to restore service along Iven Avenue, the Radnor Hotel lost air-conditioning to its 171 rooms. But the hotel had enough electricity from a secondary power feed to keep common areas cool, as well as the food in its restaurant kitchens, said Louis Prevost, the hotel's senior vice president.
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