More than half of the 40,000 Long Island Power Authority customers who lost power due to the winter storm had their electricity restored early Saturday afternoon, officials said.
National Grid, which took over storm response from LIPA, said Saturday that as of 1 p.m. 29,000 ratepayers had their power restored and 94 percent of those restored were back in line within four hours of going in the dark.
As of 2:30 p.m. there were still 9,000 homes and businesses without power, LIPA reported on its website. National Grid said those customers should expect to have their power back within 24 hours, an estimate that the utility made Friday as they were prepping crews for the storm.
The large amount of snowfall—up to 30 inches on the Island—has made some roadways impassable, the utility said. Some crews won’t be able to access certain job sites until the roads are cleared and deemed safe.
“National Grid continues to coordinate with town, county, and state officials and remains ready to assign repair crews to any inaccessible outages as soon as roadways have been cleared and access is available,” National Grid said.
But the utility warned that outages are still possible because heavy snow on trees are capable of downing wires and damaging electrical facilities.
“Our pre-planning has us well positioned to respond to any additional outages and we will continue to monitor any changing conditions and openly communicate our progress,” National Grid said.
The electric grid fared well during the storm, the utility noted, and outages came in far below the estimate of 100,000 customers losing power that National Grid predicted Friday.
