PSEG Long Island works to restore power after Hermine
As post-tropical cyclone Hermine slowly weakens off the coast of Long Island, New York, PSEG Long Island said on Tuesday that it continues to work to restore power for more than 650 customers impacted by outages.
PSEG serves 1.1 million customers, and in anticipation of the storm had 1,500 line and tree personnel ready to respond throughout the holiday weekend and into this week.
“We are seeing winds today, but we do have a full complement of personnel out there to handle outages as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Elizabeth Flagler, spokeswoman for PSEG Long Island, recently told Daily Energy Insider.
In recent years, PSEG has strengthened its electric distribution infrastructure against future storm damage across Long Island and the Rockaways through the help of funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Hazard Mitigation Assistance storm hardening program.
More than $729 million of federal recovery funds was secured for the Long Island Power Authority in 2014 via an agreement between N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and FEMA.
“We strengthened the electric grid to better withstand extreme weather,” Flagler said. “We have installed more wind resistant wires as well as poles. We also elevated several substations above flood level in preparation for this kind of severe weather.”
More than 1,000 miles of mainline circuit facilities have been installed by PSEG, a unit of the Public Service Enterprise Group, Inc., an energy company that operates the Long Island Power Authority’s transmission and distribution system.
In addition, the installation of “innovative automation that isolates faults allows us to limit the number of customers impacted by an outage and significantly speed up the restoration of power that has been lost,” Flagler said.
In preparation of what had been anticipated to be hurricane force winds from Hermine, PSEG coordinated the arrival of more than 700 mutual aid personnel from Hydro Quebec and National Grid – Upstate New York, among other contractors from across the United States and Canada.
Long Island fared much better than Florida, where Hermine was the first hurricane to make landfall in the state since 2005. Approximately 18,000 homes and businesses in Florida remained without power Tuesday afternoon, according to the Florida governor’s office.
Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) said that investments it has made to strengthen its electric grid that serves customers across nearly half the state of Florida are paying off, as shown by its response to the hurricane.
“The fact that we were able to restore power to more than 110,000 customers within 24 hours following Hermine’s passing is further evidence that the significant investments we’ve been making in our electric grid during the past decade are clearly providing benefits for our customers,” Eric Silagy, president and CEO of FPL, said in a written statement.
FPL’s investments include upgrading power lines and poles to be stronger and more resilient and leveraging the technology of its 4.8 million smart meters.
