Utility made most of ‘dress rehearsal’
Last summer, Gov. Ned Lamont had strong words for Eversource, which supplies electricity to nearly 1.3 million customers in Connecticut, for its response to Tropical Storm Isaias, saying it was “wholly inadequate” and calling for an investigation.
But the utility company’s preparedness for Tropical Storm Henri on Sunday, a far less severe storm than forecast, has drawn praise from the governor and other critics of its Isaias response.
“We’re holding the utilities accountable. We have performance-based regulation that’s in place but a little credit where credit is due. I think they stepped up,” Lamont said Monday after touring storm damage in Canterbury, one of the hardest hit towns in the state.
“They had twice as many folks on the ground ready to go this time as last time, and that’s the way we’ve got to do it,” the governor said. “Let’s make this the norm.”
Joe Nolan, Eversource’s president and CEO, acknowledged Sunday’s storm was as much a test of the company’s preparedness as its reputation as it works to “win back the hearts and minds” of its customers and state and local officials.
“I spent the entire storm in Connecticut,” Nolan said in a phone interview late Monday afternoon. “I made a commitment I wouldn’t leave until the last customer was on.”
While, yes, that was a deliberate decision heading into Henri, Nolan said, “it’s also my style.” A career employee at Eversource, Nolan came up through customer service.
“I’m an out front focused person,” he said. “I want to motivate the troops.”
But how good of a test was Sunday’s storm? It caused about 60,000 total outages, 33,000 at one time during the peak, as opposed to the maximum of 870,000 that Eversource had prepared for.
“It’s a dress rehearsal,” Lamont said in Canterbury. “But you could be sitting around with 50 percent of the houses without power, so we did better on that front. We didn’t know what the problem was going to be two days ago. We thought it might be Hurricane Sandy.”
Eversource had issued a warning and planned for a so-called Level 2 emergency — meaning 625,000 to 870,000 customers could be out of power for up to 21 days. The company had 9,300 of its own employees and trucks full of out-of-state workers at the ready Sunday, so much so that it diverted 600 crews to Rhode Island, which was worse off.
Nolan, who said he had a room through Thursday at the Hartford Marriott, said with most outages in Connecticut resolved — less than 1,000 customers remained without power — he was planning to return to Boston on Monday night.
In calls with several dozen community leaders and legislators on the company’s Henri response, Nolan said he received positive feedback including from the governor and strong critics in the General Assembly such as state Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, who stood next to Nolan as he briefed reporters on the storm Sunday night and applauded the company’s efforts.
“They performed as they should have in my opinion,” Needleman, co-chairman of the legislative Energy & Technology Committee, said by phone Monday. “There was no forecaster that said this was just going to be a rain event.”
Eversource never downgraded the level of the event, even when it was clear the forecast had changed and the outages and damages would not be as bad as expected. Craig Hallstrom, Eversource’s president of regional electric operations, said Sunday there was no operations need to do so because the levels are used more as a planning tool to ensure adequate crews and supplies are in place
Following the Isaias debacle, Eversource was fined $30 million and the General Assembly passed a law, which imposes stiffer penalties on utilities if outage responses are lacking. Under the law, customers who lose food and medicine during outages that last more than 98 hours are entitled to credits. Eversource is appealing the fine in court.
Needleman said the new law makes clear “we want them to be on the slightly overprepared side, not the underprepared side.”
Eversource’s handling of Henri “showed to me that they’re taking our criticism and comments seriously,” he said.
But, he added, it’s going to take more than one event to tell for sure.
Needleman’s co-chair, State Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, agreed the utilities “prestaged appropriately for what all the meteorological reports were.”
“There was no prestaging last year and there was poor communication,” he said Monday. “This time there were damage assessors in place. Linemen can’t safely perform their work until the damage assessment is done.”
He noted the changing directions of the hurricane that turned back into a tropical storm, sparing Connecticut from more damage.
“That’s the conundrum preparing for this stuff: It is that this will happen and it will look like they overstaged.
Henri was also a test for Gov. Ned Lamont, who appeared at briefings from the state’s emergency operations center in Hartford in a rain jacket, joking that he has become an “amateur meteorologist,” as he eyes reelection.
The storm provided a check on whether regulatory measures he supported “are having any teeth and making a difference.”
“I think they are,” he said.
Lamont was joined in Canterbury on Monday by U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, who also issued strong rebukes of Eversource following Isaias.
“There is still a lot to be assessed as to whether or not Eversource is going to be responsive in future years,” Blumenthal said. “I welcome their responsiveness this time around, but I’m going to keep the pressure on.”