Expediting Storm Restoration
Richard Tobin is Director for Emergency Preparedness at Eversource.
With more frequent and severe weather impacting the U.S. energy grid, increased power outages are inevitable. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season in 2022, making this the seventh consecutive year that hurricane activity was expected to be above normal.
While meteorologists and climatologists debate why this is happening, we — and most other energy companies — are solely focused on being well prepared and ready to quickly adjust to changing forecasts and other unforeseen obstacles when responding to, or preparing for, severe weather.
Many times, we must quickly assemble a small army of line and tree crews in advance of a storm. That's become standard operating procedure for Eversource across the three states we serve — Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. We are faced with the challenge of sometimes tripling our workforce in a matter of hours. To guide the thousands of crews, we have to be mobile and have the ability to quickly move our command structure into the field.
That's why we continue investing in a fleet of state-of-the-art Mobile Response Centers. These forty-five-foot-long, fifty-six thousand-pound vehicles serve as transportable hubs, making it significantly easier to direct and coordinate efforts before, during, and after a severe storm.