City Water, Light and Power crews are continuing response to the damage and power outages caused by the June 29 derecho and storms. At the height, nearly 40,000 customers were without power and nearly 30,000 of those customers including many priority medical facilities, critical care agencies and first responding agencies were restored Friday or by Saturday night. Currently outages are at approximately 10,000 customers in over 400 separate outage locations.
Massive storm damage wreaked havoc on the City’s electric system causing the large number of outages. Preparing for storms like this is why utility companies engage in contracts and mutual aid agreements for these special circumstances. CWLP has added outside help for power restoration as well: 81 personnel in 60 trucks to date in restoration efforts—from Indiana to New Jersey, City of Batavia, Illinois, and Rochelle, Illinois are all assisting. This is in addition to contract crews from Asplundh. In replacement efforts over 125 poles and growing are being replaced, thousands of other smaller equipment items such as insulators, fuses and replacement wire.
From over 50 feeders or circuits, today CWLP crews are finishing up the final single feeder of those. As these circuits are restored work is beginning on more of the lateral line outages or backyard outages that are in smaller pockets around the City. There are over 500 work tickets that have been entered for widespread damage across the entire span of the CWLP electric system.
In today’s Electric Operations assessment, CWLP personnel are estimating three phases of restoration for the remaining 10,000 customers:
1.3,000 or 30% restored by end of Tuesday (7,000 out)
2.3,500 or 65 % restored by end of Friday (6,500 out)
3.2,500 or 90% restored by end of Sunday (1,000 out)
In addition to CWLP’s line crews, troubleshooters, substation and relay crews, it’s continued to be all hands on deck for power restoration efforts. Line crews, substation, relay and communications crews are working 17-hour shifts and troubleshooter coverage remains 24 hours a day for this phase of power restoration work. Asplundh line construction crews and other crews from utilities in South Bend, Indiana are assisting CWLP. Crews from New Jersey are also being tasked to assist. Additional staff have been added to the CWLP Electric Dispatch office to assist in outage response beginning Thursday.
Track Progress From CWLP’s Outage Information Page
Large outage areas and locations where CWLP is assessing, investigating are also being listed. It’s one click to Outage Center or Power Out from CWLP.com. https://cwlp.com/Departments/ElectricDeptHome/ElectricInformation/ElectricOutages.aspx
Other updates will continue on the utility’s Facebook and Twitter pages, www.facebook.com/4CWLP, www.twitter.com/CWLP_ .