Thousands work in South to restore power to customers in Isaias’ wake

Repair crews continued working Oct. 13 to restore electricity to more than 65,000 customers across four states affected by Hurricane Isaias and its aftermath. That number was 7.5% of more than 900,000 customers affected after the storm's late Oct. 9 landfall, which lightened regional loads and wholesale power prices.

The storm had rapidly weakened to a post-tropical cyclone by 4 am Oct. 10, the National Hurricane Center said, but its strong winds and heavy rains posed continuing threats to Appalachia through Oct. 11.

Florida Power & Light's Northwest Florida Panhandle utility bore the heaviest cost in terms of customers going offline, with more than 440,000 losing service over the course of the storm. As of about noon CT Oct. 13, PowerOutage.us reported FPL had fewer than 44,000 customers without power.

In an Oct. 12 news release, FPL President and CEO Scott Bores said, "Thousands of men and women are working around the clock, navigating downed trees, debris and difficult conditions to reach our customers in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties. We will keep pushing forward safely in all counties until every customer who can receive power is restored."

FPL has almost 17,000 workers from 29 states helping to restore service from 15 staging areas, FPL said, facing challenges accessing heavily damaged areas in remote, rural areas.

'Unique storm' experienced

"Hurricane Isaias was a very unique storm in that we saw the most damaging wind fields on the west side of the eye wall," Bores said in an Oct. 12 webcast. "And that west side eye wall passed directly over Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, bringing a lot of extensive tree damage. We were not able to access a lot of the roads and areas, the more rural areas in these counties, given that they were impassable the last few days. As we started to get eyes and truly understand the extent of the damage ahead of us, the amount of work is going to cause us to spend a little more time out here than we would like to."

US Energy Information Administration power demand data shows peakloads in the Southeast region affected by the storm dropped by more than 10 gigawatts, or almost 29%, to $25.2 GW on Oct. 9, compared with Oct. 2's 35.4 GW, and Oct. 10's peak dropped by 8.7 GW, or 26%, to less than 24.7 GW, compared with Oct. 3's 33.3 GW.

Platts' bilateral day-ahead on-peak index for the Into Southern power price point dropped to $53.50/megawatt-hour on Oct. 9, down $23, or 30.1%, from the Oct. 2 assessment of $76.50/MWh. The Oct. 10 index fell further to $26/MWh, down $25, or 49%, from Oct. 3's $51/MWh.

Other states affected

Southern Company's Alabama Power had the second-largest number of customers offline at the peak, with almost 196,000 customers without electricity about 6:30 am Oct. 10, according to PowerOutage.us, but the utility had dropped that number to fewer than 5,200 as of noon Oct. 13.

Sister company Georgia Power had the third-largest number of outages at peak, 80,394, but that number was just about 1,900 at noon on Oct. 13.

North Carolina had the fourth-largest number of customers offline during the event, at more than 10,300 about noon Oct. 10.

The TV station WCNC Charlotte reported that North Carolina had 11 tornadoes on Oct. 11, and South Carolina had nine tornadoes. The storm dumped almost 10 inches of rain on the mountains, causing local flooding.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Oct. 13 announced six deaths linked to the storm, including a tree falling on a home, a generator used in a garage poisoning a home's occupants, a car accident and two people losing power needed for medical equipment.

"We're sad to hear that, but at the same time, we've had some [storms] where we had a lot more," DeSantis said.