LIPA Responds to Heat and Severe Weather, Restores Major Outages across Long Island

June 9, 2008

(Uniondale, N.Y.) As of noon today the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) had restored power to over 81,000 customers of the 89,490 experiencing outages island-wide due to Sunday’s severe weather system. Most of the damage was isolated to Suffolk County.

Although Long Island is currently in the third day of a heat wave, most of yesterday’s outages were the result of damage caused by severe thunderstorms Sunday evening knocking out power to large parts of Oyster Bay in Nassau County and Mastic and Eastport in Suffolk County.

“With temperatures expected to exceed 90 degrees over the next two days as well as another round of thunderstorms predicted for tonight and Tuesday, we continue to monitor our systems very closely,” said LIPA President and CEO Kevin S. Law. “Right now we have hundreds of high-voltage linemen and tree trimmers working on remaining outages on 16-hour shifts; that number will increase substantially at 4:00pm today. National Grid has sent an additional 22 crews from Albany and New England to assist us with our recovery efforts.”

In addition to extra crews LIPA has set up a walk-in Command Center in the Eastport Fire Department where residents can go to have their questions answered about the status of outages to their homes and businesses.

Also, because of the severity of this heat wave, LIPA has suspended service terminations for customers in arrears until the weather breaks.

LIPA anticipates a peak demand of over 5,000 MW today and an even greater demand tomorrow. [1 MW powers approximately 1,000 homes]. LIPA’s all-time high summer peak load was 5,792 MW set on August 3, 2006. 2007’s average peak load was 3,079 MW.

“We understand the hardship of those customers who are currently without power and I promise you that our hard working restoration crews are working 16 hour shifts to return service to everyone as quick as possible,” said Law. “In the meantime we ask for your patience and a remind customers to call our hotline at 1-800-490-0075 to report an
outages.

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LIPA, a non-profit municipal electric provider, owns the retail electric Transmission and Distribution System on Long Island and provides electric service to more than 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. LIPA is the 2nd largest municipal electric utility in the nation in terms of electric revenues, 3rd largest in terms of customers served and the 7th largest in terms of electricity delivered. In 2006, LIPA outperformed all other overhead electric utilities in New York State in all three major reliability categories. LIPA does not provide natural gas service or own
any on-island generating assets. More information about LIPA can be found online at: http://www.lipower.org

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LIPA Contact Information:
Ed Dumas- VP of Media Relations
516.719.9838 (Office)
631.872.2790 (Cell)

LIPA Media Pager: 516-525-LIPA (5472)
media.relations@lipower.org

LIPA News Center
www.lipower.org/newscenter

LIPA Storm Center
www.lipower.org/stormcenter

Posted by News LI Editor · Edited by Brianna - Filed Under Technology