Berlin-based electric utility Connecticut Light & Power is ahead of its restoration pace from the 2011 outages that caused the company great public scrutiny, an official said.
CL&P just started the damage assessment from Hurricane Sandy on Tuesday morning and doesn’t have projected restoration times yet, but the company already has restored 135,000 customers since noon Monday and has 1,000 crews working on the effort compared to 300 with Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, said CL&P spokesman Mitch Gross.
“We got out ahead of the storm,” Gross said.
That doesn’t mean the 456,649 CL&P customers who were without power as of 1:45 p.m. Tuesday will get power any faster than last year — where some restorations from the October snowstorm took 11 days — as the company still is assessing the impact, setting up staging areas, and working with municipalities to clear roads.
“There is a lot of damage out there,” Gross said.
CL&P had 670,000 customers lose power with Irene in August 2011 and 810,000 customer lose power with the October 2011 snowstorm.
Hurricane Sandy left more than 594,000 Connecticut businesses and homes without power Tuesday afternoon as restoration efforts began in the morning where more than 640,000 were without electricity.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy lifted the non-emergency travel ban on the state’s highways at 8 a.m., although he urged caution as the wind, rain, and flooding from Sandy still were cause for concern.
In addition to the CL&P outages, New Haven-based electric utility United Illuminating reported 134,693 of its 320,150 customers were without power at 1:45 p.m.
While CL&P and UI provide power to the majority of ratepayers in Connecticut, the state also has municipal utilities covering smaller areas. Norwich Public Utilities reported on its Twitter account at 1:45 p.m. that 3,116 customers were without power.
The worst hit areas were along the Connecticut coastline, followed by the more rural eastern and western parts of the state, according to the CL&P and UI outage maps. Central Connecticut fared better comparatively. Hartford had 1,716 outages as of 1:45 p.m., representing 2 percent of CL&P’s customers in the city.
Waterford nuclear Millstone Power Station was restoring its one operating reactor to 100 percent output on Tuesday morning. The plant’s owner, Dominion, had put the reactor at 75 percent power during the storm to better handle the debris in Long Island Sound. Millstone’s second reactor has been shut down for refueling this autumn.
Millstone did lose power to its administration building during Sandy, and Dominion is working with CL&P to get power restored. The administration building does not control operations of the reactors.
