What Is The Rochester Nypower Company Repairing Now

Downed power lines in front of FoodLink on Mt. Read Boulevard access road.

RG&East and its sister visitor NYSEG have 1,300 employees and contractors in the field to repair power lines that were damaged or destroyed by Midweek's windstorm, the companies said Thursday.

In an encouraging sign, the number of RG&Due east customers with no electricity had fallen from nearly 92,000 to 87,600 by belatedly Thursday afternoon.

Only neither RG&Due east nor NYSEG had begun providing estimates of when power might be restored at any given location, and the companies warned in a statement that some outages would be a "multi-twenty-four hours result." They referred people to their outage webpages for data on restoration times, though those webpages did non provide specific estimates for customers in the Rochester region.

RG&E and NYSEG said their first task later the tempest was to depower and remove downed power lines. RG&E alone had ii,500 of them. Damage cess followed, and initial restoration efforts focused on critical structures such every bit law stations and health-intendance facilities. They said they also were focusing on repairing larger transmission and distribution lines whose restoration would benefit the largest number of people.

RG&E may be able to begin providing estimated restoration times for groups of customers on Fri, company officials said.

The company urged its customers to sign up for text, electronic mail or voice alerts of outage-related data, including restoration times, for specific addresses.

More than 125,000 customers of the two utilities lost power during the storm, and the vast majority of them remained without electricity late Thursday afternoon. Nigh 87,600 of those however without power were Rochester Gas and Electric customers in Monroe County. How many of the utility crews were assigned to RG&East territory, and specifically how many were working in Monroe Canton, was non disclosed.

New York Land Electric and Gas had 24,000 customers yet without power Thursday afternoon. Near of them were in Erie, Wyoming and Niagara counties, though hundreds more were scattered through 18 other counties located as far east equally the Hudson Valley.

RG&E and NYSEG, owned by Spanish energy behemothic Iberdrola SA, said they had obtained assistance from the four regulated New York state utilities that weren't hard-hit by the storm — Con Edison, Orangish & Rockland, Central Hudson and PSEG Long Island. Utilities from Canada, likewise as contract electricity workers and tree crews, also had been brought in.

By fashion of comparing, the other large upstate utility, National Grid, said Thursday information technology had ane,700 utility workers in the field. The company had up to 147,000 customers without service afterward the tempest.

More specifically, National Grid said 1,100 of those workers were in Genesee, Wyoming, Orleans, Erie and Niagara counties, the hardest-hit role of its service territory, where most 64,000 customers however had no electricity Th afternoon.

National Grid'due south deployment in that location gave it 17.ii utility field workers for 1,000 customers without power. The comparable figure for RG&E and NYSEG was considerably lower — x.four workers per 1,000 customers.

National Grid'southward Steve Brady cautioned that comparisons may not be apt considering the nature and geographic dispersion of the storm harm may be different between various companies' service territories. "It's not as elementary as a ratio like that," he said.

RG&E spokeswoman Juanita Washington didn't immediately answer to a request for comment.

National Grid, different the Iberdrola companies, was able to provide restoration times for at least some of its powerless customers Th. It expected to have power dorsum to all of its customers in western Monroe County by 6 p.m. Fri, according to the company'due south outage website.

SORR@Gannett.com

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