National Grid – Massachusetts

National Grid Power Outage Map – Massachusetts

At 11 AM on Tuesday August 30th 2011 National Grid US said on their home page that:

We have restored power to nearly 650,000 customers. And we expect to have restoration estimates for all communities by the end of today. At the peak of the storm we had more than one million customers without power across our service territory. The biggest storm in decades rendered many towns and communities without power. We are using all resources at our disposal, including amphibious vehicles, helicopters and ATVs to access remote and hard to reach areas.

At 9 AM on Tuesday August 30th 2011 National Grid US reported that:

Forty eight hours after Hurricane Irene swept through the state, National Grid has made significant progress in restoring affected customers. Approximately 165,000 Massachusetts customers are without power, down from a peak of nearly 500,000 at the height of the storm on Sunday.

It's now 5:19 AM on Tuesday August 30th 2011, and possibly because very few other people are simultaneously attempting the same thing I can currently view the National Grid US online outage map without problems. Here it is:

Power Outage Map for Massachusetts at 5:19 AM on Tuesday August 30th 2011

National Grid CEO Tom King appeared in an interview on CNBC yesterday:

Tom answered a variety of questions, including:

Why don't we have everything underground. Why do we have things that are on lines at the top of trees?

His answer was:

Your bills will double!

At 12:00 PM on Monday August 29th 2011 the National Grid online outage map is not responding, but their home page informs visitors:

Hurricane Irene caused widespread damage to National Grid’s electric system across our service territory. We want to thank our customers for their patience as thousands of National Grid employees and contractors work around the clock to restore your service as quickly and safely as possible. Our crews continued efforts today focused on clearing downed wires and restoring power to as many customers as possible. Because the damage to our system is so significant and widespread, restoration is expected to last well into the weekend in some of the hardest hit areas.

No press releases seem to be available reporting the number of customers still without power. However National Grid US suggest that customers check their page on Twitter for further information. On there they say that:

#Irene caused nearly 500,000 of our customers to lose power. We're actively working to restore every single customer.

and:

We are receiving hundred of tweets. Doing our best to answer as many as possible.

There they are also referring Rhode Island customers to a page on ProJo which does seem to be updating. Also on ProJo is a news article in which states that:

The latest count from National Grid shows 282,280 customers without power across the state.

and reports Tim Horan of National Grid is reported as saying that:

We're still assessing quite a bit of the state, but we have quite a bit of restoration that's taking place at the same time. We're knocking the numbers down. We were over 300 (thousand) earlier today.

Here is an outage map that we managed to obtain on Sunday:

Massachusetts power outage map at 11:58 AM on Sunday August 28th 2011

I suspect the 500,000 number includes all National Grid's operating areas including Rhode Island, New Hampshire and the Long Island Power Authority.