As the days drag on since last weekend's unusual October snowstorm these are still thousands of households throughout the US Northeast states without power. With each newspaper or TV newscast, you see stories of hardship and outrage over the delays in restoring power. Politicians make public proclamations about utility company incompetence and poor response and it's an easy target. While I'm pretty sure there are at least a few things that utility companies could do better, for the most part they are the doing the best that they can given the circumstances.
Pretend for minute that you are a utility company executive. You have stockholders to answer to and rates are often capped/regulated. Picture the manpower and equipment that you would need to provide the service that everyone is expecting in the wake of the storm. Everyone wants power back on within 24 hours if not sooner. The Northeast based utility companies have brought in crews and equipment from as far as Michigan and, as of today, they still have not finished. What does this mean? If you tried to have resources to deal with the situation in the manner expected, you would have to have at least 3 or 4 times the workforce and equipment. This means that for the other 95% of the year when there were no storms/crisis you would be paying 2/3 of that utility company workforce to do nothing. Electrical rates would have to go up greatly and then there would be a domino effect of consumer cutbacks and manufacturing jobs leaving the Northeast states for lower rate regions.
In closing, working with electrical grid high voltage lines and infrastructure has to be done in a controlled manner to avoid costly mistakes and delays. The crews are doing the best they can and pushing them harder or longer puts their lives at risk. Power companies do make plans and expand / share resources to deal with the seasons and anticipated weather events but this last one was so unprecedented, unexpected and widespread it would be impossible to ramp up for even if cost was not an issue.
I'm sure my view of this matter might be tested if in fact my power was out but give those utility companies and especially the crews you meet a break.
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