| To our customers,
We understand that power is critical to supporting your family and your lifestyle – and this is especially true today, when so many of us are homebound during the pandemic. We also understand that accurate information on restoration times is critical to help you plan your daily life. Tropical Storm Isaias was one of the most powerful storms to strike the Northeast in years, with reports of tornados and wind gusts topping 100 mph in some places. At its peak, more than 1.7 million homes and businesses lost power across Long Island and New Jersey – including 420,000 PSEG Long Island customers. Our goal always is to restore power safely and as quickly as possible. PSEG Long Island began preparing for this storm last week and currently has nearly 3,000 personnel, including tree-trimming crews and utility lineworkers, dedicated to restoring customers. That number includes mutual aid workers called in from across the U.S. and Canada as forecasters warned that the storm would have a severe impact on the region. As of Thursday afternoon, power has been restored to more than 300,000 PSEG Long Island customers, and our crews will be working around the clock until every customer who lost power is turned back on. Crews are assigned to restore critical facilities first – such as hospitals and emergency responders – followed by outages affecting the largest numbers of customers, then addressing outages affecting smaller numbers or individual customers. We expect that 85% of all affected PSEG Long Island customers will be restored by the end of Friday, with remaining outages restored by Saturday. While that effort continues, our teams have set up customer outreach and comfort stations in heavily affected areas. Tropical Storm Isaias’ impact on customers was historic – causing more outages than any weather event in recent years. On Long Island, the storm’s impact on telecommunication networks affected our ability to respond to customer calls as quickly as we wanted. However, at no time did the challenges PSEG Long Island faced with our communications systems impact our restoration efforts. We have still been able to assess the full extent of the damage and dispatch crews to the impacted areas. PSEG Long Island understands how critical it is to share accurate and timely information with our customers. We are seeing significant improvements in our call center operations since Tuesday and we are working diligently to improve all of our systems to fully resolve these issues. Our restoration crews are working tirelessly, and we are thankful for your patience. Until every customer affected by Tropical Storm Isaias is restored, we want you to know we are here for you. From tree removal to repairing poles and wires on your street to strengthening critical infrastructure serving your communities, we’re doing everything we can to restore power to your home safely and as quickly as possible. Thank you. |
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| Ralph Izzo Chairman, President and CEO, PSEG |
