CL&P response under review

Six members of Connecticut”™s congressional delegation asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate Northeast Utilities”™ response to the October nor”™easter, with the state intensifying an inquiry launched after Tropical Storm Irene to study why power outages lasted more than a week in pockets of Fairfield County and elsewhere.

At deadline, no private lawsuits had been filed in state or federal court against Northeast Utilities or subsidiary Connecticut Light & Power but if recent history is any indication, that remains a possibility. In southern California, business owners and residents filed a class-action suit against utilities there after a punishing September blackout cost employers about $120 million by some estimates.

And in August, an insurance carrier sued CL&P for more than $700,000, claiming the utility”™s negligence resulted in a transformer fire at a New London hospital that left doctors scrambling to divert ambulances, move patients and reschedule surgeries.

In an answer filed in court in late October, CL&P responded the hospital”™s own negligence contributed to the situation in not having adequate emergency generators in place. CL&P also cited an agreement governing electric services to customers absolving it of liability from “acts of God” and operating conditions, among other factors.

Connecticut”™s congressional delegation cited the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in criticizing CL&P for restoring power more quickly to other states than in Connecticut. U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen. Richard Blumenthal signed the letter to FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, as did Reps. Rosa DeLauro, Jim Himes, Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney.

“Immediately after the storm, we know that roughly 48 percent of households in Connecticut were without power,” the legislators wrote. “In Massachusetts and New Hampshire, 20 percent and 60 percent of households were in the same situation. However, five days after the storm, the situation in Massachusetts and New Hampshire improved greatly with 25 percent and 8 percent of the households (that) lost power still down. Conversely, in Connecticut 54 percent of the customers that lost power were still down five days after the storm.”

The Energy Policy Act focused on providing tax incentives and loan guarantees for varying energy resources, but also set reliability standards for grid operators in response to the Northeast blackout of 2003.

Those standards largely focus on bulk-power transmission lines, however, and not local distribution wires such as those brought down in the nor”™easter. While CL&P sustained damage to bulk-power distribution lines in the western part of the state, delays restoring power were largely the result of too few crews to address myriad downed lines statewide.