Central Maine Power said Easter evening that “the vast majority of outages related to Thursday’s snow, rain and wind storm will be restored later tonight.” But the threat of high winds and rain on Monday, April 13, is already causing renewed concern.

As of 6 p.m. 90 percent of customers have been restored and 26,000 outages remained.

More than 260,000 customers were affected by the storm and the company has had more than 2,000 employees and support crews in the field and in support roles working on restoration since Friday. Crews worked through Saturday night and all day Easter Sunday to repair system damage and restore service.

“Today we moved additional crews to Penobscot, Somerset and Waldo counties where the majority of the outages remained.  While we are preparing to address any new challenges that Monday‘s weather may bring, our major focus today is to get service back to customers who are still without power,” said Doug Herling, president and CEO of CMP, in a news release.  “We are at the point where each repair restores fewer customers at a time.”

CMP follows a restoration process that initially focuses on locations that restore larger numbers of customers at once, and then restores equipment and lines serving smaller numbers of customers.

The company asks that for the health and safety of the working crews and the public that customers not approach lineworkers on work sites.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is also directing lineworkers and field staff to take all appropriate precautions including:

• Limiting one employee per vehicle travelling to field locations
• Working in separate teams to minimize contact
• Restricting visitor access to company facilities
• Entering a customer residence only in the event of emergency and after assessing risk
• Maintaining appropriate physical distancing in the field

CMP  advises customers to use online tools, accessible at www.cmpco.com to report and monitor outages.

To ease the financial impact of the pandemic, CMP announced that it is suspending late payment and customer reconnection charges for all customers and has extended eligibility protections to customers participating in certain payment plans.  

Restoration priorities:

• CMP follows an orderly process when restoring service that emphasizes safety and seeks to make effective use of resources.
• CMP’s immediate concern after a storm is public safety. Restoration teams work with towns and the state to de-energize downed lines, clear roads and restore previously identified critical facilities such as hospitals and shelters.
• Next, CMP focuses on assessing damage and repairing the backbone of the electrical system: substations, transmission lines, circuits and primary lines. Crews focus on locations where they can restore large numbers of customers at once.
• Then, crews restore equipment and lines that serve smaller groups of customers.
• Finally, crews focus on restoring remaining service lines to individual homes and buildings until every customer has service. This phase may begin while higher-priority work is already underway.