The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Some skeptical of Eversource emergency plan
Some elected officials at the state and local levels remain skeptical of Eversource Energy’s ability to restore power in a timely manner following storm outages despite the electric distribution company’s release of a new emergency response program.
“Eversource isn’t making these changes voluntarily,” said state Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Energy and Technology Committee. “The (Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority) decision in April made it pretty clear what was needed. The changes they have made (in the emergency response plan) are positive for the communities and ratepayers: My hope is that Eversource stays the course and makes sure it goes the distance.”
Eversource Energy officials on Wednesday released details of improvements made to the utility’s emergency response program. Arconti’s comments Thursday came on the one-year anniversary of Connecticut’s electric distribution system being badly damaged by Tropical Storm Isaias.
The storm left more than 700,000 Eversource customers without power, some for more than week.
Mitch Gross, an Eversource spokesman, said company officials “began making many of these improvements (to the emergency response plan) immediately after our Isaias restoration work was complete and implemented our new strategies in nine storms that occurred before PURA’s storm decision was issued.”
Guilford First Selectman Matt Hoey said one of the biggest concerns he has about Eversource’s emergency response plan “is their ability to communicate in a timely manner so we can keep the community informed.”
The new emergency response plan reportedly addresses that issue, through creation of an online hub to provide information to municipal officials more quickly. The hub can be updated in realtime, including information about facility status and blocked roads.
Hoey said another concern he has with Eversource’s plans to deal with future storms is the utility’s ability to adequately provide enough crews to do what he called “make-ready work.”
“Those crews come out and deactivate the lines so that our road crews can come in and open up pathways for emergency services in cases where a tree has fallen across the road,” Hoey said.
The emergency response plan Eversource highlighted Wednesday don’t mention such makeready work. But Gross said Thursday that a new team the company has created “works directly with municipalities and first responders to prioritize public safety emergencies, clear blocked roads and speed the response to urgent repairs.”
Essex First Selectman Norman Needleman, who also is a state senator and co-chairman of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, said one aspect of the emergency response plan that he found troubling is Eversource’s willingness to bring in private contractors from the western United States in advance of storms.
“They clearly don’t have enough internal staff to respond to storms like these,” Needleman said. “This shows what level they will go to in an effort to avoid financial penalties, which they will then try to recover from ratepayers. I know they are trying to improve, but I’m going to have to talk to them about this.”
Other improvements to the Eversource response plan, according to the company’s release, include:
⏩ Expanding the capacity of Eversource’s online outage reporting system so it can handle more call volume.
⏩ Use of drones to more quickly identify lines in need of repair.
⏩ Physically strengthening the distribution network including stronger utility poles, thicker wiring and “smart switches” that will allow for operators to isolate power outages and remotely reroute power.
Officials with PURA are reviewing the improvements Eversource said it has made to its response plan.