Hartford conglomerate Northeast Utilities has entered into a contract with an Ohio software firm in order to centralize the emergency restoration process for power and natural gas outages.
The deal with Arcos of Columbus, Ohio provides a centralized callout and crew management database for reploying restoration crews. Arcos claims this will improve restoration times by several minutes.
NU is making the service available to subsidiaries Connecticut Light & Power, Yankee Gas, Western Massachusetts Electric Co., and Public Service of New Hampshire. The subsidiaries NStar Electric & Gas already implemented the Arcos software prior to their April 2012 merger with NU.
NU remains under scrutiny for its emergency response efforts, following two CL&P outages in 2011 than left more than 690,000 people without power in each instance, some up to 11 days. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is determining now whether CL&P should face a penalty for its response to those storms.
