Politics & Government

Power Report: 'It's Neighborhood by Neighborhood' Restoration

Thousands are still without power as of Thursday night.

Four days after Hurricane Irene hit Union County, about 5,000 customers were still without power as of 8 p.m. Thursday.

Of those, about 2,000 were Public Service Electric & Gas customers and 3,000 were Jersey Central Power & Light customers.

"I know it's frustrating in places like Cranford where they've been out of power for days," PSE&G spokesman Fran Sullivan said Thursday evening. "We're hoping that the vast majority of the customers that aren't in flood zones, we hope to have (power) back by tomorrow. In areas we physically can't get trucks into because of the flooding, we are hoping for Sunday."

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Even then, some areas might have to wait until early next week for the lights to turn on because power restoration will depend on the recession of flood waters and safety inspections by municipal authorities, according to the utility's website.

The first step to restoring power right after a storm, when tens of thousands of people are in the dark, is to put circuits back in service that have critical infrastructure, such as hospitals, police and fire departments, Sullivan said. The utility then looks to restore power to circuits that will bring back the biggest number of people as possible.

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"We start large on repairs we can make that will bring people back in the tens of thousands and work backward from there," Sullivan said. "When we get down to this level and more than 90 percent of people who lost power have been restored ... When we get down to this level it turns into a neighborhood-by-neighborhood effort and, at the very end, house to house."

Irene left about 790,000 customers without power across New Jersey, which PSE&G said is "the worst storm" in the company's history that knocked out a third of its users. With less than 10,000 customers still waiting for power, Sullivan said restoration will seem slower than the initial days after the storm.

"So now we dispatch let's assume line trucks because a tree limb came down and took out a wire, so we dispatch three trucks to make the repair that might only bring back 50 customers," Sullivan said.

Residents are likely to see outage numbers fluctuate as restoration continues as well.

"It could be a situation where we restore power to one part of the circuit and brought it back but in another part of the circuit a tree fell or damaged somewhere else, which knocks service out."

In places like Cranford where a substation was underwater due to flooding, Sullivan said the utility has to take the substation out of service to dry it out and make repairs. As that process continues, and loads on the circuits increase, it could be too much load on one circuit and the utility then has to take it out of service again until further repairs can be made.

Having restored service to circuits that serve large numbers of customers, crews are now completing the isolated problems, such as where trees that have fallen across wires and pulled down poles have to be removed, the poles replaced, and the wires and other equipment reconnected and energized, the PSE&G website states. About 6,000 employees are assisting in the restoration effort, of which nearly 1,000 are linemen actually doing the repairs.

"People are looking for answers and it's hard to get information out," Sullivan said. "When you have a major substation (under water), there's no practical way to say, 'OK we'll have this all taken care of by Thursday or Friday and that frustrates people more. At least if we gave them the information with what we thought would be, they could take that information and get a hotel, or go to a relative's house and make arrangements. If we kept missing our deadline that would be even more frustrating."

With that in mind, Sullivan reiterated that he's hoping most power outages restore by Friday and the remainder restore by Sunday. He said linemen are working through the night to complete the restoration process. JCP&L is reporting the same time frame for restoration.

"People who are without it could be because of damage on the lines that we now need to find and fix," Sullivan said. "This is the toughest part — the end because it's neighbrohood by neighborood or house to house restoration."

According to Union County, it's possible residents will experience a brief power outage of about one hour over the weekend as PSE&G makes permanent repairs to the grid and must power down to do so.

"They are moving along," Union County spokesman Jim Pellettiere said. "They are doing what they can and something like this, it just takes time."

As of 8 p.m., the following outages were reported by PSE&G:

  • Between 500 and 2,000 customers out in Roselle
  • Fewer than 500 customers out in Elizabeth, Kenilworth, Cranford, Westfield, Scotch Plains, Fanwood, Clark, Garwood, Rahway, Plainfield, Berkeley Heights, Mountainside, Linden and Union.

As of 8 p.m., the following outages were reported by JCP&L:

  • Berkeley Heights: 977
  • Chatham: 1
  • Mountainside: 15
  • New Providence (including Murray Hill): 557
  • Springfield: 593
  • Summit: 1,173
  • Watchung: 57


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