Making Hash of the Commute

I'm so glad I'm not commuting into NYC this morning.

NJ Transit is an absolute mess. They claimed that they had service restored on a couple of lines, but here's what that meant.

For Main/Port Jervis, it was 7 trains inbound in the morning, and 3 would get to New York City after what's normally considered rush hour (10-11am). No reverse commute trains. In the PM, you'd have the same situation - 7 outbound trains, with staggered times that include times outside rush hour.

Those attempting to do the commute found themselves in a mess - serious overcrowding. The overcrowding was so bad that #NJTransit suspended service on the North Jersey Coast Line service and customers utilizing the Woodbridge station were told to use Metropark station for service to/from Newark and New York.

Meanwhile, bus service isn't much better. Mrs. Lawhawk who had to get to court this morning, had to let three buses pass her by with standing room only before she found one with a seat. That's crazy.

But, once she got into the city, the commute was much smoother. The MTA has done a phenomenal job in restoring service, including to Lower Manhattan and service was being added faster than the MTA cartographers could update their service maps (which are being updated daily). When you think of all the millions of people who rely on the subways, Joe Lhota has done a tremendous job in getting service restored, even though some stations may be out of commission for a while - particularly in the Rockaways and South Ferry. Other lines are being bypassed because of lower ridership and the need to concentrate on the routes that have the ability to restore service to the greatest numbers of people in the shortest time. It means that some areas are still cutoff, including Williamsburg, Coney Island, and parts of Lower Manhattan, but if someone did a time lapse of the service maps, you'd see just how fast the service was restored.

Now, going forward the question will be how to prevent the disruptions we've seen from getting as bad as they were.

For starters - the feds and states ought to consider legislation requiring all gas stations to retrofit with generators (and in flood-prone areas - sufficiently elevated to reduce chances for disruption). That would allow people to refuel, and to power their generators to get power back quicker. It would alleviate traffic considerably and hasten the recovery rather than lose time to waiting in lines for gas.

New York should have implemented even/odd gas fill ups just as New Jersey did for affected counties. It's alleviated some of the lines around Bergen County - but restoring power does that even more.

New York State has to pony up to fund the MTA to get more storm mitigation in place - better drainage/pumping systems/flood gates to prevent the tunnels from getting swamped.

And in New Jersey, they've got to take a critical look at NJ Transit and how they were ill-prepared to deal with the storm and the after-effects. Did they not realize that people would attempt a commute during rush hour and the limited trains they would run would get overcrowded due to conditions.

It's the same problem they had after last year's storms (Irene and Lee). Now, we're going to see just how slow NJ Transit will be in restoring service, though it's not all their fault - PSEG has to restore power so that NJ Transit rail signals/gates can function. But that's another place where backup generators could make a difference.

Photos From the Recovery in Radburn

One tree removed, countless others remain to be addressed

PSE&G already installing new poles to restring power lines. Tree crews had come through earlier today to dispose of the trees that took out these lines.

Lots of work remain before power gets restored on this segment. At least two more poles have to be installed before they can begin restringing the power lines and other utilities.

The culprit for part of the Radburn Road outage cut down to size.

 

The tree leaning against the Radburn Apartments has been cleared.

The trucks are from Indiana. The crews are from Wisconsin. They're here in Radburn clearing away the trees from adjacent to the Radburn post office.

A Slow Slog To Recovery From Sandy

Relief efforts in Fair Lawn continue. I was out and about and PSE&G is busy in my vicinity. They had tree crews working ahead of them - cutting away trees that had brought down lines on Radburn Rd., and were already in the process of putting up new poles. They had to take a break to get additional poles. Once the poles are up, they'll have to restring the lines followed by running new lines up to the homes where the power was ripped from the poles.

Elsewhere, tree crews are out by the Radburn post office (and we even got mail this morning). But incredibly, cars were ignoring traffic cones about ongoing work and drove through the active work scene - putting everyone at risk. Crazy stuff.

The tree crew I spoke with had trucks from Indiana and came in from Wisconsin. They'll be in the area as long as it takes.

It's a monumental effort.

I've got pictures to post later - some from the same area I took the other day to see the difference.

Also, I saw PSE&G survey crews marking down where additional trees need to be addressed - those leaning on poles/wires/etc. It's heartening to see, even though it's taking too long by half.

Neighbors from on the other side of the park said that they were told a week to 10 days. They have generators running for now. Other folks I met said they were conserving their generators because of the lines for gas.

The quicker power gets restored to gas stations, the sooner the gas mess will ease. The more homes that see power restored, the less people will need to go for gas to fill up their generators.

Oh, and speaking of generators - I saw way too many of them located too close to their homes, even to the point of being in garages or enclosed spaces. Those are CO poisonings in the making.

People wont even realize they're getting poisoned until it is too late.

Have We Learned Anything From the Great Blackout of 2003?

Nine years ago, the Great Blackout of 2003 struck the United States and parts of Canada from Ohio to New York. 50-60 million people were thrown into darkness, including millions in the New York City metro area. I was among those who had to figure out how to get home without subways/PATH or rail signals operating. Highways and roads were jammed because traffic signals were out.

Power was eventually restored, with the outage running as long as 30 hours in some parts of the affected area, and we learned that the outage was initially due to a transmission line in Ohio failing due to a tree falling, but the outage spread as utilities failed to contain the problems. That triggered a cascading failure across the Northeast.

The utility responsible for maintaining that Ohio transmission line failed to maintain its right of way and carry out tree trimming and other preventative actions.

Has the United States improved its transmission infrastructure to the point where we don't have to worry about another catastrophic blackout? I'm not so sure. Utilities and their regulators have improved their communications to reduce the chances that a blackout in one interconnect will affect others.

But as we've seen over just the past year, utilities have repeatedly fallen short on maintaining their utility rights of way - particularly on tree trimming. Blackouts due to Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Irene, and the October blizzard of 2012 all were exacerbated by utilities that failed to deal with tree trimming issues in a systematic way. Connecticut was particularly hard hit by those storms, and CLP's disastrous efforts in restoring power were hammered by state and local officials. A failure to carry out an effective tree trimming program was identified as a contributing factor.

Regulators have to do a better job in making sure that the companies are investing in the transmission grid and responding to outages in a timely manner. They have to make sure that the utilities are investing in tree trimming programs to protect their infrastructure, though that would seem like a no-brainer since it's cheaper to protect the transmission lines through a systematic tree trimming program than trying to rebuild parts of the network during a crisis. Utilities have to upgrade and invest in technologies, and that also means that rate payers have to deal with higher costs that are passed on to them.

PSE&G has been doing a better job of trying to upgrade its infrastructure; it's currently upgrading transmission lines in Rutherford and Fair Lawn as well as building out its distributed solar power system. Con Ed is also spending on its infrastructure, but with mixed results - there are perpetual concerns of brownouts and blackouts whenever the temperatures spike during the summer because the distribution system can barely keep up with demand. That has to change.

Massive Blackouts Throw Half of India Into Darkness

Yesterday, a massive blackout sent more than 300 million people into darkness as portions of the Indian power grid collapsed under the strain of trying to keep up with demand. Power was restored, but only briefly as a second much larger blackout has now put more than half the country into darkness.

The same power lines are involved:



600 million are without power in the world's largest blackout.

Half of India's 1.2 billion people were without power Tuesday as the grids covering 19 states broke down, the second major blackout in as many days.

Stretching from Assam, near China, to the Himalayas and the deserts of Rajasthan, the power cut was the worst to hit India in more than a decade. The power loss includes grid failures in northern, eastern and northeastern India.

Trains were stranded in Kolkata and New Delhi and thousands of people poured out of the sweltering capital's modern metro system when it ground to a halt at lunchtime. Office buildings switched to diesel generators and traffic jammed the roads.

The blackout also shut down nuclear power plants because safety systems require power to operate, further reducing available power.

To put this in perspective, about 10 million customers were without power in the major Northeast Blackout of 2005. India's blackout affects nearly twice the population of the entire United States.

How did India arrive at this point? It starts with a massive growth spurt putting more demands on the existing power grid and an infrastructure that can't keep up with that growth. Making matters worse is a monsoon season that has been unseasonably dry and warm, putting even more strain on demand.

This may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg as India struggles to grow its economy but is hobbled by an infrastructure that is ill equipped to deal with surging demand.

It also raises questions on how the Indian power grid is set up so that so much of the country could be plunged into darkness. It would appear that failsafes and/or utility procedures didn't work as they should have.

It was a failure of various interconnects that led to a cascade failure that brought down the power grid in the Northeast in 2005 following several transmission power lines being disrupted by fallen trees. Procedures were modified to reduce the chances of a future failure of that type.

Burying Power Lines Not Panacea Against Blackouts

Once again, a large swath of the United States is facing major power disruptions. This time, it's the Middle Atlantic states, from New Jersey through Virginia that were hit by strong and severe thunderstorms that took out power distribution lines and are leaving more than 2 million people without power during a lengthy heat wave. Already, 17 people have died due to the storms and after-effects.

Some of those people might not see power restored until after July 4th.

That's unacceptable, but does it mean that burying power lines is the solution to preventing outages?

The answer is it totally depends on the power system and local conditions.

It is expensive to move utility lines underground, and while it might mean fewer power disruptions due to power lines being disrupted due to downed trees, it could mean even more difficulties during flood conditions.

Buried power lines would have to be dried and/or replaced, and that could mean even lengthier power outages.

To maintain the power distribution grid, a balance needs to be struck between burying major power lines and using overhead lines where appropriate. It also means protecting utility right of ways from trees that might take out power lines, but also burying the lines where flooding isn't an issue.

Connecticut Panel Hands Down Recommendations Over Electric Utility Reliability

Once you attach a price tag to any project, all of a sudden supporters suddenly balk at making the necessary changes.

Connecticut residents suffered horrendously at the hands of Connecticut Light and Power during the double whammy of Hurricane Irene/Lee and then the freak October snowstorm. Millions of people were without power for days on end, and the utility was ill-prepared to deal with the snowstorm even after seeing how badly it responded during the hurricanes.

A panel set up by Governor Malloy has issued numerous recommendations, but it would call on rates to go up 10% in order to increase reliability by 30-40%.

The strongest recommendation was one that came from Connecticut Light & Power on the last day of the hearings – a proposed $2.2 billion plan to boost reliability.

Panel co-chair Joe McGee says the utility claims the plan would boost resiliency by more than a third, but will customers be willing to pay more for this?

“Their proposal was a 10 percent increase in your monthly bill for a 30 to 40 percent increase in reliability of the system,” said McGee.

In all, 82 recommendations were passed onto the governor for his consideration.

One of the reasons that the utility did so poorly had nothing to do with rates, but everything to do with not getting regional assistance plans in place to bring in supporting utilities from outside the region in a timely basis and then doing a poor job coordinating those efforts. Throw poor communications on top of everything else, and what you get is a mismanaged utility that can't do its basic job - delivering reliable power to its customers.

It can claim that those rate increases will improve reliability, but one has to question how other utilities in the state were able to do a far better job without similar rate increases (see PSE&G and even Con Ed and LIPA - and Con Ed and LIPA aren't exactly paragons of virtue when it comes to power reliability and dealing with outages). CPL skimped on tree trimming and other maintenance issues, and that had a large part to do with just how badly it handled the crisis.

So, what else does the panel recommend and find? Well, it realizes that the state has been hit by a string of severe storms, and that climate change may be involved (and might lead to even more severe weather events).

The panel called on the state to develop new engineering standards that will better protect the built environment from the effects of extreme weather and those standards should then be incorporated into the State’s Building Code within six months of development.

The panel also noted that there's a toxic work relationship between the utilities and their workforce, and that the utilities must prepare a worst-case scenario based on a Cat 3 hurricane (which is stronger than what the state experienced but well above the previously planned worst-case scenario that posited only 100,000 outages statewide; there were 1 million outages during the two weather events in 2011).

Tree trimming and infrastructure hardening is one of the priorities that must be addressed, but it shouldn't take a 10% increase in rates to accomplish.

Connecticut Light and Power CEO Resigns Amid Criticism

The CEO of Connecticut Light and Power has resigned. Jeff Butler has stepped down after his company failed to restore power following the October nor'easter in any semblance of a timely manner, and after withering criticism over how the company failed to make necessary preparations ahead of the storm that could have mitigated the disastrous blackouts and restored power more swiftly.

There are multiple investigations into CLP's mishandling of both Hurricane Irene and the snowstorm, and one area of attention is whether the company put profits ahead of power distribution and maintenance programs (including tree trimming).

Connecticut's Utility Fails To Meet Own Deadline To Restore Power

Connecticut Light and Power is the poster child for all that is wrong with power utilities in the country. Not only can it not provide its basic purpose - reliable power distribution, but it can't even make its own deadlines to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people across the state.

Thousands of customers are still without power two weeks after the early season snowstorm.

CLP's parent company, Northeast Utilities, has put up $10 million to offer assistance to its customers and waived penalties and other fees from the storm period. That's cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of customers who were without power for nearly two weeks.

Gov. Dannel Malloy empowered a panel to investigate the utility and thus far there's no good news for the utility. It cut back on tree trimming, and while the utility can claim that it has spent more on trimming in recent years, it's less than it was spending a decade ago (as adjusted for inflation). That translates into less miles of line that gets trimmed - meaning that more trees are likely to cause service disruptions.

Others are now focusing on CLP's parent company, and how the political favors and lobbying has won it the right to little oversight or responsibility when things go horribly wrong.

The State Attorney General is working with a risk management company to try and figure out what the utility did and is an expansion of similar investigations being carried out in the wake of the utility's failings during Hurricane Irene.

There are five separate investigations ongoing into CLP's actions during the aftermath from Irene and the snowstorm.

Lights Still Out For 100k Customers In Connecticut

So much for self imposed deadlines. Connecticut Light and Power (CLP) blew its self-imposed deadline to get 95% of service restored. More than 100,000 customers are still without power across Connecticut, as compared with nearly all customers restored in New York and New Jersey and Massachusetts.

CLP is now saying that service will be restored Wednesday. Anyone want to give odds on that?

There are further rumblings that the utilities may seek rate increases to cover the storm damage costs.

Sorry, but as someone who lost power for a couple of days, was severely inconvenienced by the loss of power, and poor customer service, I doubt anyone will stomach rate increases when there's evidence that the outages were extended due to the utilities own failures.

This includes not reimbursing mutual support companies for their work done in prior storms that led those companies to scale back the number of responding units. Pennywise and pound foolish looks like a theme in Connecticut, and to a lesser extend in other utilities as well.

Putting the bottom line above maintaining a dependable transmission grid has led to cutting back on basic maintenance. Trimming trees once every four to five years is insufficient. This storm once again showed that power lines are extremely vulnerable to wind and storm damage and that tree trimming must be much more aggressive to reduce the chances for outages.

So, while it means that many old growth trees might need to be pruned or removed, the upside is a much more reliable grid. Trees should be part of the landscape, but size-appropriate trees should be put in place. That means that 80-90 foot trees should make way for trees that are 20-30 feet tall and less likely to bring down lines and in places where burying lines makes sense (such as when roads are already going to be torn up for utility/sewer work/repaving projects), then the utilities should also be relocated underground. I think people will support plans that reduce damage going forward, but aren't going to sit still and take rate hikes for the companies own failings.

All of this is little comfort to those who are now without power for eight days. Among the worst hit areas include around Farmington, where more than 50% of customers remain without power.

Gov. Malloy now says that the situation is unacceptable. About time he did so. He's been late on getting ahead of the storm damage wrought by the early nor'easter. While he says that the state is mulling its options, here's a few ideas:

1. require all utilities to devote far more resources to maintaining, pruning, and other basic services;
2. impose penalties for outages that are the result of failing to adequately trim trees that lead to outages that last longer than they otherwise should have when the utility knew, or had reason to know, that the storm damage was likely;
3. impose penalties for delays that last longer than a period of time that cannot be reimbursed through rate hikes; and
4. clear red tape when it comes to tree trimming programs so that utilities can prune trees as necessary to maintain rights of way.

Utilities Still Working To Restore Power Across Northeast

While PSE&G and Jersey Power and Electric are close to getting the lights turned back on for all of its residents, Connecticut consumers aren't so lucky. There are more than 300,000 customers still without power.

Why did Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy wait until yesterday to activate the National Guard to help with clearing trees and debris from roads? Activating the National Guard would have freed up resources and helped localities get reconnected to the grid faster.

Yet the real problems lie with Connecticut Light and Power (CLP). They've done so much wrong in handling this crisis that someone will likely do a case study about how a utility shouldn't function.

But giving Northeast, specifically its Connecticut Light and Power subsidiary, a divine pass is like absolving Lehman Brothers of any blame for its demise in 2008. Like financial firms, utilities need to manage risks. And they have it relatively easy: much of the task simply involves clearing overhanging trees and other hazards from power lines.

Yet according to regulatory filings, Connecticut Light and Power cut its maintenance spending by 26 percent, from $130 million in 2008 to $96.5 million last year. Put simply, that seems to suggest that one in every four trees that could have been trimmed was left untouched, though the company says the maintenance line was depressed by a deferral of expenses for accounting purposes.

The utility showed the same kind of tin ear as some banks, too. Even as customers still faced a week without electricity after Irene struck, the Connecticut Light and Power boss, Jeff Butler, suggested any restoration costs should be covered by increasing electricity rates — when Connecticut’s power is already the most expensive in the continental United States. Mr. Butler later backtracked. But this week he suggested the weekend snowstorm came without warning — words he was again forced to eat.

There’s even a near-perfect model of how Connecticut Light and Power could have done the job better. Norwich, Conn., a city of 40,000, has owned its own electric utility, as well as those for sewage, gas and water, for 107 years. Norwich Public Utilities’ customers pay, on average, a bit less than Connecticut Light and Power’s. Yet after this past weekend’s snow dump, power was out for only about 450 of its 22,000 customers — and for no more than an hour. As of Thursday morning, nearly half a million Connecticut Light and Power customers were still waiting for the lights to go on.

That’s not luck, either. After Irene hit, just 13 percent of the city’s customers lost their power for more than a day. Within three days, the whole of Norwich had been restored. It took more than a week for Connecticut Light and Power to fully restore power.

That makes it seem odd that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has tended to appear alongside Connecticut Light and Power’s Mr. Butler and to support the utility, even though far more customers lost power than should have and restoration proceeded too slowly. There’s solid numerical evidence to justify Mr. Malloy’s berating Connecticut Light and Power and calling for Mr. Butler’s head on behalf of the citizens of his state.

In contrast to Connecticut Light and Power, Norwich’s electric unit last year increased operations and maintenance spending by 11 percent, to $2.9 million. Put another way, in 2010 Norwich allocated about $132 a customer to this line item in its accounts. Connecticut Light and Power reported maintenance, unadjusted for deferred expenses, of $96.5 million, or around $78 per client.

They refused to get mutual assistance calls in before the storm hit so that they didn't have prepositioned units ready to respond. They didn't take the weather forecasts seriously enough - even after everyone in the region knew that the early season snows would bring down trees because most trees still had their leaves. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that snow of any significance would lay low trees and power lines when the leaves are still on the trees.

CLP can't make its own self-imposed deadlines for service restorations, and that's completely unacceptable, particularly in light of the way that the company has cut back on basic maintenance.

It's abundantly clear that CLP failed its customers, but it further appears that the state of Connecticut failed its citizens as well in not taking appropriate steps to handle the natural disaster. When the state saw that CLP wasn't getting the job done in any semblance of a timely manner, it needed to act. The governor failed to do so.

Someone must be held responsible for the ongoing failures, and that includes both the utility and the governor.

Back in New Jersey, the last few remaining outages are being dealt with and some single customers may be out of power for longer because the damage affects more than the power line to their homes or businesses (taking out the lines all the way to the utility box/meter for example). Some towns are already out of snow days and are contemplating extending the school year to meet requirements.

Municipalities around the region are also dealing with how to clear tree debris. Some, like Fair Lawn and Wayne, are allowing residents to bring all tree debris to the curb and crews will pick them up if they bundle the trees/branches and cut them down to size. Landscapers will have to cart away tree debris.

However, in Mountainside, New Jersey, the town workers are cutting branches along the right of way but are then throwing the tree debris back on to the properties for the owners to remove. That's an absolutely asinine policy - but the town claims that they aren't responsible for removal.

And for a real estate market that is already rocky, the loss of so many trees means a reduction in curb appeal. Healthy trees can add up to 10% in value to a home. I'm spending quite a bit of money to get the damaged trees on my property pruned following the storm. Healthy trees were most affected by the storm since they still were in full leaf.

Frustrations Mount As Millions Remain Without Power Across Northeast

While there's been quite a bit of good news in New Jersey (particularly PSE&G) in restoring power, other areas aren't so lucky. Jersey Central Power and Light has the bulk of the outages in New Jersey, and PSE&G has reduced their outages to about 20,000 statewide (mostly Northern NJ). Those that are still without power can't take solace in those figures.

JCP&L is urging people to be patient, but as the outages wear on and the weather remains cold, it's hard to give the company any slack. After all, PSE&G was able to cut down the number of outages significantly, although towns like Teaneck remain a mess and schools remain closed as a result of the ongoing outages.

Orange and Rockland still has thousands without power across the Hudson River valley, and CLP still has more than 400,000 customers without power.

The frustration is mounting, and there's quite a bit of chatter about how CLP has misallocated its resources, including not giving mutual assistance crews the go-ahead to fix downed lines and equipment when they have the ability to do so. Power isn't expected to be restored until the weekend in large parts of Connecticut, and it doesn't appear that anyone is going to hold the utility responsible. Gov. Malloy is talking the talk about how they're trying to safely restore power and that it will take time, but isn't taking the right tone in dealing with the utility, which seems to have done everything wrong - from refusing to make the mutual aid calls in a reasonable time frame, to underestimating the level of damage, and then not giving its mutual assistance crews the ability to fix what needs to be fixed so that areas can be restored.

Some localities are considering suits against the utility. One in particular is Simsbury, which claims that the utility has only one crew working there - and that the public works crews are trying to clear streets, but need the utility to sign off on whether the lines are safe to work around and clear.

When asked whether the town was going to seek a lawsuit against Connecticut Light & Power, Glassman said the town is extremely disappointed that up until Wednesday they have had one CL&P crew working in Simsbury.

The town sued CL&P in the 1990s for the same reason because there were too many outages at the same time.

As a result of that lawsuit, CL&P increased their tree-trimming program, upgraded their transmission lines and added a substation in Simsbury which has since improved power in Simsbury.

“But we have a lot of questions now,” Glassman said. “Why five days into the storm do we only have one crew assigned to Simsbury, which was one of the hardest towns hit? So we will be exploring our options including litigation.”

Public Works Director Tom Roy said Tuesday they have every single person working on the restoration efforts and there are several contractors clearing the streets and debris.

“What our goals are right now is to get access to residents by car and emergency vehicles,” said Roy. “The limiting factor for us the majority of trees that have not been cleared at this point are entangled in the power lines. We need CL&P to verify that it is safe to work near them.”

Clearly, it appears that CLP is in hot water with its customers and regulators better take a good look at whether it's exercised reasonable prudence when it comes to maintaining its grid, handled trimming trees properly, and then failed to address the outage in any semblance of urgency.

Power Remains Out For Millions In Northeast; Connecticut Remains Hardest Hit

While I may have gotten power restored yesterday, millions of other people in the NYC metro area and up into New England are still suffering for lack of power.

PSE&G has been ramping up its response, and they've got more trucks and equipment stashed at the parking lot for Garden State Plaza than when they used it as a staging area for Hurricanes Irene and Lee. They're using the lot to stash equipment ranging from poles and transformers to power lines and other key equipment to get the distribution lines up and running.

Connecticut Light and Power is saying that it hopes to get power restored to 99% of its customers by Sunday. There are also reports that CLP's response may have been slow because the company hadn't paid contractors for work done during the storm response to Hurricane Lee and Irene.

On Tuesday, Butler also said that he was aware of reports that a slow response from out-of-state contractors who were hesitant to travel to Connecticut to aid in power restoration was because they had not been paid from their work during tropical storm Irene.

When asked if the non-payment had been an issue that prompted the contractors to avoid showing up sooner in Connecticut this week, Butler said, "I'm not aware that it has been.''

"I know our customers are extremely frustrated,'' Butler said. "It's not a pleasure to have customers without power.''

He added, "Unlike Irene, it's cold at night. ... We recognize the frustration.''

Butler is the COO of CLP; and the company better be looking at revisiting the policy in light of the devastating outages that affected all parts of Connecticut and nearly took CLP off the grid entirely.

Trying to pin the blame on the lack of mutual aid from PSE&G or Con Ed makes no sense, not when utilities up and down the East Coast from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York were struggling to deal with millions of outages themselves. PSE&G was bringing in crews from Ohio and elsewhere to assist; so too was Con Ed; yet CLPwas finding it difficult to track down mutual assistance? That would appear to have more to do with the CLP company policy than the mutual assistance companies.

Even the feds are noticing that the storm response is slower than during Irene, particularly in Connecticut:

Bryan says utility companies didn't have time to get additional workers from other regions in place before the snowstorm like they were able to do before Irene in August. The companies had several days to prepare for Irene and only a few days to prepare for the snowstorm, which hit the region harder than was forecast. At midweek last week, some forecasters said the storm was going to miss New England.

Thousands of extra crews from across the country are now helping to restore power in the Northeast, where some utility customers aren't expected to get their electricity back until next week.

"When you know you've got a hurricane coming, part of the mutual assistance package is to pre-stage crews," Bryan said. "So after the hurricane has come and gone, you already have crews on the outskirts ready to come in and start working. … This storm hit, and these crews were not mobilized."

Six thousand extra utility crews were either working in the Northeast on Tuesday or getting close to arriving, officials said.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who asked the Department of Energy for help in coordinating the cleanup and power restoration response, said Tuesday that he was disappointed that the number of out-of-state crews helping in the state was lower than expected. A spokeswoman for the governor said he wasn't criticizing the utilities' response, just trying to do everything he could to get the power on quicker.

About 700 extra workers on Tuesday were helping the 200 regular crews of Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state's largest utility, which had requested 1,000 additional crews. The weekend storm caused more than 830,000 outages in the state — a record — and about 650,000 customers remained in the dark Tuesday.

Bryan said it appeared there were problems in the way extra workers were being distributed in the region.

"If you look at the outages in Connecticut, which basically equal the outages of all the other places combined, you really don't have yet a fair distribution of workers, mutual assistance teams out here doing this," Bryan said.

CLPadmits that they didn't request mutual assistance before the storm hit, as they did in preparing for Hurricane Irene. That was a serious mistake on their part, and one of the reasons why it is going to take as long as it is for power restoration.

The latest figures on outages is here.

North Jersey Still Suffering From Widespread Power Outages

For a second straight day, Northern New Jersey is without power across much of the region following the deadly nor'easter that left snows of nearly two feet in some places, but the lasting effects are the thousands of trees that were downed or damaged as a result of the heavy snow combined with leaves till being on the trees.

That's a recipe for disaster - taking out power line after power line. The nasty weather and snow further hampers the efforts to restore power since power lines block roads that have to be plowed so that crews can get to where they have to repair lines. You had to clear lines so that the plows could get through. It was the proverbial chicken or egg problem for some parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachussetts (which saw some areas get 2+ feet of snow) and the Hudson River Valley in New York.

As with the recover from Hurricanes Irene and Lee, people are wondering why utilities aren't being forced to locate utilities underground, where they wouldn't succumb to weather events like this every time the wind blows.

It's a good question and states and localities have a patchwork of rules regarding utility hookups.

Some require that new developments place utilities underground at the developers' expense. Others have no requirements.

It all comes down to cost.

Placing the lines underground may be more costly at the outset - 8-10 times more expensive than running lines on utility poles. Those are costs that are passed on to utility consumers. The underground lines are also potentially more expensive to replace as their life expectancy isn't nearly as long as overhead lines under normal conditions. Also, power restoration after floods are extremely troublesome for underground lines. Whereas a flood event may leave the overhead lines undisturbed, a flood for underground utilities may requires days or weeks of work to restore power.

Thus, it's a balancing act as to whether a given area would benefit from overhead or underground lines.

However, with the recurrence of major outages in the area, it's time that the utilities reconsider the overhead lines in troublesome areas.

Moreover, all the utilities should look towards ramping up their tree maintenance programs to prune back trees in and along their rights of way to prevent downed trees taking out entire towns and communities.

Scattered Power Outages As Heat Wave Bakes Big Apple

Con Ed is reporting scattered power outages as its equipment literally fries in the record-breaking heat hitting the New York City metro area. Newark hit a record of 106. Central Park hit 103.

The NY ISO is currently distributing 33,907.9 MW while the PJM is only hitting 150,363 MW.

2003 Blackout; Five Years Later

It's been five years since the massive Northeast blackout, and Gothamist has a retrospective.

Since then, the power infrastructure remains a question mark in the NYC metro area as Con Ed has had power woes annually, but operational and administrative changes have seemingly improved the situation so that the 2003 blackout could not happen again.

One of the measures to prevent another blackout is for utilities to engage in trimming trees along their right of ways. That's got some people upset, since some trees have had to be cut down.

You can't please these people. They want uninterrupted power, but don't seem to care that the reason that the blackout occurred was because power lines were cut by tree limbs that fell on them in the Cleveland area and that as remaining power lines sagged under the added stress, they too came into contact with trees and shorted out.

Gothamist also notes that power demand in the NYC metro area is expected to increase 30% by 2030, which makes one wonder just where all that power is going to come from because the eco-left doesn't want to build power plants or the transmission lines that can deliver power from outside the immediate region. Conservation alone will not save the day either.

Chinese Hackers Behind Massive Northeast Blackout?

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.

There has never been an official U.S. government assertion of Chinese involvement in the outage, but intelligence and other government officials contacted for this story did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role. One security analyst in the private sector with close ties to the intelligence community said that some senior intelligence officials believe that China played a role in the 2003 blackout that is still not fully understood.

I'm skeptical of the fact that such links were not explored fully, and if that evidence indeed linked Chinese hackers, especially those working for the Chinese government, to the blackout, that the US government would not have taken a position on the matter through various means at their discretion. Such acts could be construed as acts of war since they were an attack on vital infrastructure and affected the national economy and directly and indirectly harmed more than 50 million people.

At the same time, it could be understandable that the power companies wouldn't want to let it be known that their systems were hacked and vulnerable to manipulation in a way that could cause a cascading failure.

The report also claims that the blackout in Florida this year was the result of a Chinese PLA hacker.

This isn't the first time that security companies have warned of hack attacks against energy infrastructure.

Breaking: Blackout in South Florida

Power outages are cascading through many parts of South Florida, with Florida Power & Light and others reporting blackouts in portions of Miami, Doral, Westchester, Pembroke Pines, Miramar and Boca Raton.

Many traffic lights are not working and nine accidents were reported in Miami-Dade County between 1:04 p.m. and 1:26 p.m. Police agencies were dispatching officers to as many intersections as possible.

The lights flickered off at several South Florida hospitals, which had to switch to generator power.

"We had a blip here and the generators kicked in immediately," Jackson Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Lorraine Nelson said.

Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and Baptist Hospital in Southwest Miami-Dade reported similar situations.

A spokeswoman for FPL said the company was investigating the extent and cause of the problem.

In one part of western Pembroke Pines, the outage began about 1:15 p.m., but service was restored within about 10 minutes.

Reuters is reporting that several power plants went offline.

I'd be curious to hear why this happened. With tonight's debate just hours away, expect someone to raise this as a question on energy policy, even though Congress has not allowed utilities to build new nuclear power plants by loosening restrictions, and the energy infrastructure in the country remains creaky at best despite a massive blackout in the Northeast several years ago and ongoing problems with energy distribution.

UPDATE:
One of the power plants that went offline includes a nuclear reactor, which apparently went offline when it lost power from an outside source.

A spokeswoman for FPL Group Inc said the company's Turkey Point nuclear reactor in Florida shut down due to the loss of off-site power but would not elaborate on the cause of the outage.

Mike Stone, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said the blackout affected two to three million people in south Florida and as far north as the Tampa area of the state.

Local media said the number of those affected was higher.

"I don't know the cause of the outage," Stone told Reuters, saying authorities were awaiting an update from FPL.

"There was a failure within the FPL system," Stone said.

They're quick to mention that terrorism isn't suspected as a source, even as no one quite knows how or why it happened.

UPDATE:
The blackout could continue into the night, and they're not sure if the instability in the grid is due to the shutdown of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant or whether it is a symptom of the problem. However, one has to wonder why the utility isn't responding to some media queries - that's just bad public relations on their part.

Florida's largest electric company shut down a nuclear reactor south of Miami for safety reasons Tuesday, causing sporadic power outages covering large portions of the state that could last well into the night. More than 3 million people are affected, the state says.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the two Florida Power & Light nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power point 30 miles south of Miami automatically shut down. Two other power plants farther north, the Crystal River reactor and St. Lucie twin reactors, in the state continued to operate, although officials at those two facilities noticed the grid disturbance.

"We don't know whether the grid disturbance caused the units to shut down or that their shut down caused the grid disturbance," said Kenneth Clark, a spokesman at the NRC regional office in Atlanta. He said the two reactors were automatically shut down and in safe standby.

"There are no safety concerns. The reactors shut down as designed," said Clark in a telephone interview. He said both reactor continued to have offsite electric power. He said two coal-burning power plants at Turkey Point also shut down.

FPL in several media interviews estimated that power should be up statewide within 10 hours. The company did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press or speak to a reporter in the lobby of its Juno Beach headquarters.

UPDATE:
Well, it appears that a problem at a nearby power substation caused Turkey Point to shut down, and the problem spread to seven other power plants, causing a widespread blackout across Florida.

Hellacious Commute

Heavy thunderstorms rolled through the NYC Metro area just before the heart of the morning rush hour, and the storms caused quite a lot of disruptions. Flooding occurred in all the usual spots in New Jersey including Route 17 and Newark, and low-lying areas in New York City. Mass transit was a mass mess. The center tube of the Lincoln Tunnel was shut because of flooding and major highways had closures as well. Subway service was disrupted as flooding along several lines caused traffic to come to a halt.

Most subway lines in the city experienced delays or diversions, and there was no Metro North rail service to Grand Central Station on some lines.

John F. Kennedy International Airport experienced delays of up to 90 minutes, and LaGuardia Airport had hourlong delays, said Alan Hicks, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Flooding on roads leading to LaGuardia affected traffic to the terminals.

Some commuters were understanding.

``It's nobody's fault. You see how hard the rain was coming down,'' said Mark Edwards, who was trying to get on a subway in Brooklyn, only to find that his line was flooded. ``Of course we're going to have problems this morning.''

In other words, this was one hellacious commute. However, I disagree with Mr. Edwards. It doesn't have to be that way all the time in the same spots.

Heavy thunderstorms happen regularly in this area during the summer. Yet, we get the same heavy flooding and disruptions each time. I can understand if trees take out power lines or that debris causes sewer systems to back up where one would not expect. I also expect air travel to be hit hard as you don't want to take off or land in severe weather. Indeed, early reports indicate that a tornado may have touched down in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. A definitive answer will come when investigators examine the scene as the damage could have been due to straight line winds or a microburst and not a tornado. Forecasters on Fox5NY and other stations had alerted Brooklyn and Queens residents of a tornado warning this morning, so the conditions were present for a severe storm.

However, we've repeatedly seen Route 17 flooded out in the same spots for decades (East Rutherford near the BJ's Warehouse for example). Flooding on the Grand Central Parkway occurs in the same spot year in and year out.

Flooding on the subways occurs fairly regularly as well.

All this is part of infrastructure upgrades that must be done in this region. Consider the possibilities if there is an approaching hurricane and the heavy rains preceding the storm make major roads leading away from the coast impassible? What happens then?

More care must be taken to upgrade the sewer systems in those areas where flooding occurs regularly. One should expect that we're going to see heavy downpours every spring and summer and the systems in place should be able to accomodate the rains. Yet, we repeatedly see flooding in the same spots, which causes closures, diversions, and traffic jams through significant portions of the region.

Note that many of the mass transit links were suspended or cancelled due to the weather. Some are finally coming back on line. Others are still out because of standing water. Hopefully, the situation will be resolved by the evening rush.

UPDATE:
The situation is far from resolved as subway lines remain shut down because of flooding.

But Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Penn State University, said no tornados formed or touched down. He said 1.7 inches of rain fell in Central Park between 6 and 7 a.m., and recent hot, humid weather powered clusters of thunderstorms over Pennsylvania and lower New York State that moved through the metropolitan area.

Paul Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, said: “We’re coming back slowly. We have to dry out we have to clean up and then we have to make sure the circuits and the signals are working before we resume service.”

For the latest service information, please see the Times’ City Room blog.

Alfonso Quiroz, a Consolidated Edison spokesman, said that about 4,000 customers throughout the city were without power — including 1,500 on Staten Island and 1,000 in the Bronx — largely because the storm knocked down power lines.

Amid the commuter havoc, M.T.A.’s website, mta.info, shut down. It was the second time in several weeks that the website was not able to function during a transit crisis. The last one was during a minor blackout on the east side of Manhattan several weeks ago.

The NYT City Blog is running updates on service disruptions. It's probably easier to say which lines are back to normal than to list the problems. Gothamist notes that the subway system pumps out 13 million gallons of water on a normal day. Today certainly wasn't a normal day with anywhere from 1-4 inches of rain falling, but there is no capacity to deal with these rains, which occur fairly regularly.

UPDATE:
I've done some digging around and there's a reason that there is so much flooding along one particular stretch of Route 17 - the area near East Rutherford - only about half of the flood control systems in place along that stretch are functioning at capacity.

It was only last year the extent of damage to the infrastructure designed to protect the Meadowlands District from severe flooding became known. After an extensive survey to accompany the Hackensack Meadowlands Floodplain Management Plan, NJMC officials announced only 56 percent of the 34 total flood control structures in the region were at functioning capacity. This past April during the Nor’easter that dumped several inches of rain on the region, those inadequacies became more than apparent as homes were evacuated, flood damages reached the millions and of course, Route 17 looked more like a river than a highway for nearly two days.

"We’re continuing to work throughout the district to get as many systems at optimal performance as possible," said Nicholas Agnoli, the commission’s head stormwater engineer.

According to Agnoli, since gaining approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] for a floodplain management plan, the NJMC has alleviated two problem areas in Carlstadt. He said they are on the verge of alleviating another threatening businesses in the industrial section of town and are soon ready to tackle the long delayed Route 17 project.

Most recently, Agnoli said the commission wrapped up a $328,000 clean-out and tide gate installation to the Moonachie/Carlstadt drainage system. The area of work, which was tested to the brink April 15 during what the U.S. Geological Survey is now calling a 100-year storm, included the clean-out of three-quarters of a mile of drainage ditches perpendicular to heavily industrialized roads such as Commercial Avenue and the Gotham Parkway.

Here's a photo of Route 17, near Ridgewood from a storm last week.

A project to widen Route 17 and build a new overpass at Essex Street will also install new drainage that should alleviate flooding in that area, which has repeatedly caused multi-mile traffic jams in heavy rain.

Barcelona's Blackout

Worry about blackouts isn't confined to the US. Europe and the rest of the world have them as well. A blackout in Barcelona shut down large parts of the city earlier today:

Fecsa attributed the outage to a failure of part of the high-tension network of Catalonia.

A power failure that affects since this morning a large part of Barcelona and the región of Baix Llobregat is causing large problems in the Barcelona area leaving without light numerous homes, businesses, hospitals, traffic lights and public transportation systems such as the Metro and the Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat.

According to information provided to Efe by Barcelona Town Hall, the outage coincided with fires at two electrical transformers in the city, situated on Paseo Maragall and Avenida Josep Tarradellas, where various fire departments responded.

For its part, a spokesman for the company Fecsa-Endesa confirmed that the outage affected various points of the city and the metropolitana area, although he affirmed that it still remains unknown the causes and the number affected.

The outage left without electricity a good part of the districts of Sants, Eixample, Gracia, Sant Andreu, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and Ciutat Vella, as well as some neighborhoods of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and de Esplugues, has provoked considerable road and train chaos, and has left without light a large number of businesses, stores and homes.

At its height, more than 300,000 customers were without power. Infrastructure woes aren't unique to the US. The rest of the world has to deal with systems that are getting older and limited efforts to modernize them.

Here in the New York metro area, Con Ed continues to get slammed for its response to the steam explosion. Longtime critic, NYC Councilman Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) wants the utility to face increased scrutiny and oversight. His district was hit hard by last summer's extended blackout when Con Ed's power grid suffered a major meltdown.

Gianaris said Con Ed should reimburse the dozens of businesses that have been affected by the blast for lost business - something he said was not done for the merchants in his district who were affected by the 2006 blackout.

"They covered nothing for lost business opportunity in that eight-, nine-day period, and it sounds to me like they're doing the same thing in midtown Manhattan, where they're covering clothes and cleanup and they're telling people to file their claims for lost business and their lawyers will review them on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Following last summer's blackout, which affected more than 100,000 people, Gianaris headed an Assembly task force that introduced legislation to force Con Ed to compete, to mandate independent audits of the utility and to increase reimbursements to merchants affected by outages.

"They have no reason to improve because there's not a damn thing we can do about it when they screw up," Gianaris said at a news conference in front of Con Ed headquarters near Union Square. "We can no longer sit by and coddle this company and pat them on the back every time disaster strikes."