About 60,000 PSEG customers remain without power following Tuesday’s tropic storm, PSEG Long Island said in a press release last night. Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power to more than 420,000 customers across PSEG Long Island’s service area.
In its latest update, the utility did not estimate how many of its customers still without power would be restored by the end of the day today. Yesterday PSEG said nearly all would be restored, with the remaining handful restored on Monday.
Last night, PSEG said it “expects to have customers restored by end of day Sunday, with some jobs moving into Monday.”
“While we have made steady progress, we are finding that each job is requiring more work than anticipated due to the extent of the storm’s damage,” PSEG-LI said in the press release, issued just after 10:30 p.m. Saturday.
According to the utility’s online outage map, which the company says may not depict up-to-date information, 581 customers in Riverhead Town are still without power. There are currently 100 outages in the town, according to the map. The vast majority of the outages affect 10 or fewer customers. The largest outages in Riverhead Town as of this morning are in Timber Park in Calverton (97 customers) and in South Jamesport (80 customers).
“The backbone of the system — transmission lines and substations — has been restored, and we are hard at work restoring the distribution system that serves our neighborhoods,” the company said. “The damage to many of these circuits is extensive, and as these individual damage spots are assessed, estimated restoration times will be refined.”
PSEG-LI said it has almost 4,000 lineworkers, tree trimmers and other personnel working around the clock, in 16-hour shifts, to make repairs and restore power to its customers. Crews have come from other regions of New York and other states and more are expected to arrive Sunday, the company said.
PSEG says its online outage map is still not displaying accurate data, which the company continues to say is because “restoration is progressing faster than can be displayed on the outage map.”
The map is a tool provided for customers to track progress and view the company’s estimates for restoration of power for outages across its system.
PSEG-LI has acknowledged it has had significant disruptions in communications with customers in the aftermath of Isaias. Customers were unable to get through to the PSEG-LI call center to report outages, the text messaging system was not functioning and the company’s website was down.
PSEG-LI maintains that the communications problems did not affect its ability to assess storm damage or dispatch and coordinate repairs.
The company initially blamed its problems on Verizon, which it said provides PSEG-LI with phone and internet services. The day after the storm, PSEG-LI said it has “overcome many of the issues with Verizon that affected our call center operations” Tuesday. But customers continue to complain they cannot get through to the call center and the outage map is still not functioning accurately.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered the Department of Public Service to investigate the “failed storm response” of PSEG-LI, Verizon and other downstate utility companies who he said failed to adequately plan for or respond to the storm.
On Friday, state lawmakers representing the East End called on PSEG to step up its efforts and harshly criticized the utility for its response to the storm and its communications with customers.
“Communication in times of crisis is critical and PSEG’s system completely failed,” State Sen. Ken LaValle said Friday.
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