The leaders of the state’s biggest utilities were called to testify today about their handling of Hurricane Sandy and what they can do to make things better when the next storm hits. New Jersey state senators heard from PSE&G CEO Ralph LaRossa and JCP&L President Don Lynch. One utility that was not represented at the hearing was Orange and Rockland Utilities. VP of Operations Frank Peverly told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that no one from his utility was asked to testify.
Compared to PSE&G and JCP&L, Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. has a minor footprint in the state of New Jersey with about 75,000 customers.
“Public Service and Jersey Central being the largest probably represent the state of total New Jersey utility today.”
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The main culprit to loss of power was downed trees caused by high winds. Future plans for storm preparation will have to include a state-wide tree trimming program, he says.
Sandy was the largest storm in terms of the impact it had on the Orange and Rockland system, according to Peverly.
“What was very different about this particular event was not only the magnitude of customers who lost service but we lost 30 percent of our transmission system, 25 percent of our substation system,” said Peverly. “So what we basically had to do is rebuild our system from the ground up.”
Peverly says everything is back on line thanks to restoration plans in place prior to the storm. “What we did immediately after the event was to keep a large contract workforce to work with our workforce in order to bring our system back to pre-hurricane conditions and at his point in time we’re probably about 98 percent there.”
An automatic phone system handled the majority of Sandy affected-customers. The system was adopted after the 2011 storms to improve the utility’s ability to handle customer calls and provide better restoration times. Peverly said the new system exceeded expectations. “Our call center’s performance [which was] handling 50 percent in the 2011 storms, handled 99 percent plus on an average speed of answer of less than 10 seconds,” he explained.
While the other utilities in New Jersey have been the ones largely targeted by state lawmakers, Orange and Rockland Utilities faced withering criticism across the border from the Lieutenant Governor of New York and the county executive in Rockland County.
Peverly took the criticism in stride, saying some things performed well, particularly in the area of communication — the phone system, use of social and web services. Going forward, Peverly says there are three areas that the utility will look to do differently.
“[We’re going to] find a way to employ the individual customer restoration, we’re going to look to build redundancy in our system and we’re going to look at how to reinforce critical infrastructure — cell towers, well fields, pumping stations — in partnership with government and private industry so that we have a more robust, more resilient system for the next event.
Related: Hearing Puts Utilities in Hot Seat for Hurricane Sandy Performance