Governor Christie Announces 99% Of Power Outages In South Jersey To Be Restored By Tomorrow Morning

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NJBPU to review Atlantic City Electric Company’s restoration effort

Trenton, NJ – June 29, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — Governor Christie today announced a service restoration timeline for South Jersey residents affected by power outages resulting from last week’s thunderstorms, including a commitment from Atlantic City Electric (ACE) to reduce outages to 1% of affected households by tomorrow morning. The Board of Public Utilities (BPU) continues to monitor Atlantic City Electric Company’s (ACE) ongoing restoration efforts in response to an unusually strong thunderstorm system last week, with reports of winds in excess of 85 mph, that ripped through southern New Jersey on the evening of June 23rd. PSE&G has fully restored service to their customers as of Saturday morning.

To date, service has been restored to approximately 368,000 of the approximately 390,000 customers who lost service statewide from the storm impacts. Restoration of electric service to all customers continues to be impacted by new outages caused by a subsequent storm on June 27th and other unrelated incidents.

“While significant progress has been made in restoring power to many businesses, households, and critical infrastructure in South Jersey after last week’s storm, there are still too many families who are dealing with outages,” said Governor Christie. “I thank these families for their patience and resilience during this period, and want them to know President Mroz and I have been working day-in and day-out with the utility companies, ACE in particular, to expedite these efforts and to ensure the certainty of a firm restoration schedule is in place. Based on ACE’s commitment this afternoon, we expect outages to be down to 1% or fewer of the affected customers by tomorrow morning, and for full restoration shortly thereafter.”

The restoration of electric service to all customers impacted by Tuesday’s storm continues to be affected by new outages caused by a subsequent storm on Saturday, June 27 and other unrelated incidents. With the ground becoming saturated from Tuesday’s storm, tree root systems may have become unstable resulting in trees becoming vulnerable to Saturday’s less severe storm and causing new outages. The subsequent storm caused approximately 16,000 new outages, some of which may have affected customers that already had power restored from Tuesday’s severe storm, according to ACE. The additional rain from the Saturday’s storm worsened ground saturation, increasing the potential for additional new outages going forward.

Prior to Tuesday’s storm, BPU President Richard S. Mroz and NJBPU staff had been in contact with all the regulated electric companies regarding their storm planning, including workforce and resource levels. Since the storm slammed into the State, primarily in southern New Jersey, NJBPU has been in constant contact with both ACE’s and Pepco’s senior leadership and restoration staff. On Friday, June 26, President Mroz, representing the Christie Administration, visited the staging area for restoration crews in Sewell to meet and discuss with some of the line and tree workers the challenges involved in the restoration effort and the extent of infrastructure damage.

Mroz also met with Joseph Rigby, Pepco President and CEO, and senior staff members and restoration supervisors to discuss the extent of damage and company’s progress toward restoration of electric service to all customers. Mroz also toured damaged areas through Glassboro and Pitman on his way to Mickleton, where he saw impacts from the storm’s strong winds on the Mickleton substation, which suffered significant damage when a straight line of extremely strong winds hit in one direction, uprooting trees and pushing them on top of all distribution lines to the substation.

The NJBPU has been and continues to work cooperatively with other state agencies such as the State’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), State Police, Department of Transportation and others, regarding specials needs such as road clearance and other critical infrastructure needs.

All customers whose electric service is out should contact their electric company to report the outage, even if they have already reported the outage. For more information on how to report an outage to ACE, visit: http://www.atlanticcityelectric.com/my-home/report-an-outage-or-safety-hazard/

Once the restoration effort has concluded, BPU staff will review the company’s planning and restoration efforts, and will report their findings and any recommendations to the Board.

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Press Contact:
Brian Murray
Nicole Sizemore
609-777-2600

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