More Hurricanes and Headaches for Utilities
Utility crews in the Northeast continued to restore power to thousands of customers who rode out Hurricane Isaias this week with the promise that even more storms could yet be on the way this summer.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Thursday updated its forecast for the 2020 hurricane season with an ominous increase in the number of named tropical storms or hurricanes that were likely to develop over the Atlantic Ocean, increasing the odds that destructive storms will strike the East Coast and Gulf Coast with large-scale power outages and disruption to offshore oil-and-gas production.
There have been nine named storms during the current hurricane season, including Isaias, which left more than 3 million customers without power as it plowed up the Eastern Seaboard. As of Friday, PowerOutage.US tallied nearly half a million outages in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions.
The new prediction from NOAA called for between 19 and 25 named storms, including the nine that have already taken place, by the time the six-month Atlantic season wraps up on Nov. 30. Between seven and 11 of these storms will likely reach hurricane status, and as many as six of those building up to major hurricanes between Category 3 and 5. An average season sees about a dozen named storms, including six hurricanes.
“This year, we expect more, stronger, and longer-lived storms than average,” said Gerry Bell, the lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, headquartered in College Park. MD.
The projected numbers were similar to those released Aug. 5 by Colorado State University, which increased its predicted number of hurricanes from eight to nine with four major storms.
The news could mean the linemen toiling in the soggy aftermath of Isaias will be putting in plenty of hours in the coming months as will their colleagues along the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Hannah at the end of July was, like Isaias, a relatively diminutive Category 1 storm, but still managed to knock out the lights to at least 58,000 customers in southern Texas. American Electric Power Texas had to ask customers in the Rio Grande Valley to continue to limit their consumption while a 138-kilovolt transmission line that was damaged by the storm was brought back online.
The damage from Isaias was the worst in the Northeast despite the fact it had been downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it blasted into the greater New York City region. As of Friday, the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut still had nearly 1.2 million customers waiting for their power to be restored.
Downed trees that blocked roads and otherwise limited access to repair crews appeared to be the major obstacle to recovery in the area. Edison Electric Institute (EEI) noted that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was also a factor, one that possibly will also slow down operations during future wind events of all types in the coming months. “Given the COVID-19 pandemic, crews must follow additional safety protocols that may add time to the restoration process,” EEI said in a statement. “Many of the preventative measures we are taking to protect the health and safety of our restoration workforce and our customers may lead to longer restoration times.”
At the same time that utilities have to dig out from the aftermath of a storm, they also face an accompanying drop in electricity sales during a period when COVID-19 has softened overall electricity demand in the business and manufacturing sectors. The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that electricity consumption nationwide during April was less than 269 billion kilowatt hours, a 4 percent decrease from April 2019 and the lowest level since November 2001.
Meanwhile, power demand has been increasing amid late-summer heat, which has contributed to firming natural gas futures prices. An increase in the number of major storms in the Gulf of Mexico could prod gas prices higher if a sizable number of offshore platforms are temporarily shut down and evacuated.
