National Grid explains outages

Date: 7/26/2011

July 25, 2011

By Chris Maza

Reminder Assistant Editor

EAST LONGMEADOW — Residents of East Longmeadow concerned about the three-day delay in the restoration of power to the town following the June 1 tornado met with representatives from National Grid at a public forum in front of the Board of Selectmen on July 19.

James Driscoll, chair of the Board of Selectmen, told Joanne DeRose and Paul Stasiuk, managers of Community and Customer Management for National Grid, that residents have come to him with concerns about the utility company’s commitment to service in the town.

“I think there is a perception, whether real or perceived, that because we’re at the end of the trail for National Grid that we experience more outages,” he said.

DeRose told those in attendance that regardless of the service area, National Grid has a vested interest in ensuring there are as few interruptions as possible.

“We are in the business of providing power,” she said. “It is in our best interest to make sure that power is transmitted to our customers. Clearly, it is not acceptable to us when meters are not turning, to put it bluntly.”

Stasiuk made a presentation outlining the circumstances National Grid had to deal with in restoring power to its coverage areas following the June 1 tornado.

Charts provided by National Grid showed that historically East Longmeadow has a relatively low number of customers experiencing interruptions — defined as power outages of five minutes or longer — from January to June compared to towns such as Hampden, Palmer, Belchertown, Ware, Warren and Wilbraham.

However, this year, largely due to the tornado, East Longmeadow experienced approximately five times the historical number of customers interrupted in that time period. Wilbraham also experienced a similar jump in interruptions.

According to Stasiuk, National Grid had to repair more than 800 downed wires, more than 400 damaged utility poles and approximately 100 damaged transformers.

In addition, three 69 kilovolt transmission lines had to be repaired. Two of those transmission lines feed the town of East Longmeadow.

“That was one of the keys for East Longmeadow,” Stasiuk explained. “If one of those transmission lines is down or damaged, we can usually switch over to the other one, but if both are down, it can be very difficult to reroute the power. With the rest of the infrastructure so severely damaged, it was impossible.”

He also added that the location of the transmission lines added to the difficulty of the repair.

“There is no road. It’s trees and rock and ledge,” he said.

National Grid also put its efforts into restoring power to essential services, such as police, fire and ambulance first, he added. With its local station being located in Monson, the company had a focus on that community, which was one of the hardest hit by the storm.

Residents complained of a lack of communication between customers and the company in the aftermath of the storm, saying that when they would call, every day they were told power should be restored by 9 p.m. that night. One resident also said that someone from National Grid in her neighborhood told her the power would be restored by night time on June 1.

Stasiuk admitted that such an issue was not acceptable and better customer service needed to be addressed.