Is your ETR too far off? The power might come on faster than you think

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa. — If you’re waiting for the power to come back on and are fretting about a lengthy restoration time, it might not be as bad as you think.

While it may seem like it takes an eternity for power companies to restore electricity to your home — and the estimates via the companies' websites just make the wait all the worse — it turns out there’s a bit more to those ETRs, or estimated times of restoration, than you might expect.

Intensive winds that walloped the Lehigh Valley through early Thursday left thousands of residents without electricity.

PPL said it had more than 3,000 outages in Lehigh County about 5 a.m. Thursday, and 900 outages in Northampton County.

First Energy Corp., the parent company of Met-Ed, reported 46 outages in Lehigh, and more than 1,100 in Northampton.

As of Thursday afternoon, PPL was down to 68 outages in Northampton and 1,129 in Lehigh. First Energy Corp. was down to 15 outages in Lehigh and 448 in Northampton.

Rough in Riegelsville

Yet over in Riegelsville, less than 10 miles south of Easton in Bucks County, numerous residents were informed via the First Energy Corp. outage map that they would have to wait until noon Friday to have their electricity restored.

But what you see can change in a matter of minutes, First Energy Corp.’s Todd Meyers said.

“Earlier today, we had no estimated time of restoration," Meyers said Thursday. "But as we get more information, then we can begin to populate that.

"And really what we're doing is we're looking to see how many unique areas of damage do we have? What's damaged? How many crews do we have right now to work on that?

"And as that becomes more clear, then we will go in there and continue to refine those times."

Power companies tend to prioritize damaged lines that feed large substations, because they provide service to hundreds, if not thousands, of customers.

Crews tend to be dispersed to higher-volume areas first, with special exceptions provided for facilities such senior care homes, Meyers said.

Teams then work their way down the line until they reach more remote, smaller areas such as Riegelsville.

“It's not that those customers aren't important to us," Meyer said. "But right now, I think the smallest outage that we have crews working is about 30 customers, and many of them are several hundred customers.”

Number of affected quickly falling

Meyers said First Energy Corp. had seen about 30,000 reported outages throughout the commonwealth as of 7 p.m. Thursday, with that number reduced to about 10,000 by 9 a.m. Thursday.

As of Thursday afternoon, “that number is now down to 3,117,” Meyers said.

Crews from Met-Ed in the Lehigh Valley are getting assistance from West Penn Power, which normally services western and central Pennsylvania, Meyers said.

Additional contractors have also been tapped to help with restoration efforts.

In “storm mode,” workers are tasked with 16-8 shifts — 16 hours on and eight hours off. As more crews are brought into the mix, companies can stagger the workers to keep a consistent force on the problem.

Meyers said most damage is from trees falling into power lines, though issues can remain even if those lines are restored if another line in the system is out.

Hence, the prioritization of larger substations before tackling the smaller areas which may feed directly to single units.

Don 't fret

And even if you happen to see a crew apparently standing around without taking action, understand that those officials likely are analyzing the situation and preventing anyone from approaching a potentially lethal wire that may not show any apparent signs of sparking or smoking, Meyers said.

In that case, immediately contact your power company or emergency services.

For now — and for the future — Meyers recommends customers to sign up for alerts through their power company. They can help to provide more accurate information about restoration times.

And if you happen to see an ETR that seems a bit too far off, don’t fret.

“It is a very strategic way that you go after power outages, and it's not just literally driving to [them and saying] ‘OK, this wire’s out, that wire’s damaged, this is damaged, this is damaged,’" Meyers said.

"Because if you did it that way, customers would be out for a much longer period of time, because you're not necessarily tackling the root cause which is going to bring on the largest number of customers.”