Duquesne Light Co. said that it could take five-to-seven days before all of of its estimated 215,000 customers have their power restored from the severe storms that ripped through the region Tuesday afternoon and evening, downing trees and power lines.
The utility said it had customers without power in Allegheny, Beaver, Washington and Westmoreland counties from about 5,490 individual outages. About 33,300 of those customers are in Pittsburgh, according to Duquesne Light’s outage map.
FirstEnergy Corp. said its West Penn Power Co. in Greensburg had about 100,000 customers without power in Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Indiana and Westmoreland counties as of Wednesday morning. The company estimated it would get power restored to 31,000 customers in Allegheny County by about 12:30 p.m. It anticipates restoring power to about 15,300 customers in Armstrong County before noon.
West Penn Power did not offer an estimate on when it might restore power to about 41,600 customers in Westmoreland County.
Focus on hazards
In its efforts to restore power, Duquesne Light said it is prioritizing its restoration activities, focusing on addressing public safety hazards, such as wires that are down across major highways, burning wires or equipment or building fires. While downed power lines are being handled, company personnel continue to assess the total damage to the electrical system’s infrastructure and begin restoring service.
Repair work that restores power to essential facilities that provide emergency services is a high priority. This includes hospitals, police, fire and emergency facilities, water and sanitary authorities, nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
It then will focus on rebuilding the major circuits, which will restore power to the greatest number of customers as quickly as possible.
Restoring power to small neighborhoods and groups of customers served by a single transformer will follow. Returning power to individual homes and businesses as crews restore “service drops” that bring electricity from the nearest pole to a single building.
Generators used by customers for emergency power should not have the ability to send any power back into Duquesne Light’s system, without fulfilling the company’s special requirements and completing the utility’s required interconnection agreement.
In major storms, some customers may remain without power longer because the electrical lines are temporarily inaccessible to work crews because of fallen trees that must be removed before electricity can be restored, Duquesne Light said.
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