Delivering Reliability During Hurricane Season and All Year Round

Here it comes—today marks the start of Atlantic Hurricane Season, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration is forecasting another above-normal season this year. The good news is that we’re ready. At Eversource, the arrival of Hurricane Season is like the arrival of the playoffs—we’re always preparing for whatever Mother Nature will bring. This proactive work to fortify our electric system is critical as the changing climate increases the frequency and severity of storms and contributes to the declining health of trees across the state.

I know that you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about trees, but they’re the number one cause of power outages during storms. That’s why here in Connecticut, we’re investing $72 million in tree trimming and hazardous tree removal along 4,000 miles of overhead power lines across the state to reduce the number and length of outages for our customers, as well as public safety issues like blocked roads. This essential maintenance is dependent upon the partnership of local property owners and tree wardens, so we also launched a new program to work in collaboration with community leaders to enhance electric reliability and public safety in their cities and towns. Our new “scorecards” illustrate the benefits of our tree work and how we can make improvements, and they’ve opened a dialogue.

In addition to our proactive tree work, we’re constantly working to modernize and strengthen our electric system. For example, we’ve installed thousands of smart switches onto our electric system that allow our control center operators to isolate outages and reroute power to our customers from a backup source within minutes, significantly reducing the length of time our customers are affected. Additionally, we’ve installed smart fuses that automatically restore power to our customers when a tree limb temporarily contacts our wires, and optical ground wire that has enhanced communication between our facilities and helps to protect the superhighway of the grid, our transmission system, from severe weather like lightning.

All this work conducted by our highly skilled team of dedicated employees is the 24/7/365 energy behind your energy. It’s what it takes to deliver reliability during Hurricane Season, and all year round. As our team continues to get ready by strengthening and modernizing our electric system, I encourage all of you to assess your own preparedness for severe weather. We have many great tips on our website that can help you get ready for major storms and stay safe after they tear through the state, including a handy storm safety checklist. I’d also encourage you to assemble or restock a storm kit with essential items, and watch this video to learn more about our restoration process so that you know what to expect when a damaging storm causes widespread outages. Information is power, and you can never be too prepared.