Public Service : A message from Ralph Izzo

To our customers,

We understand that power is critical to supporting your family and your lifestyle - and this is especially true today, when so many of us are homebound during the pandemic. We also understand that accurate information on restoration times is critical to help you plan your daily life.

Tropical Storm Isaias was one of the most powerful storms to strike the Northeast in years, with reports of tornados and wind gusts topping 100 mph in some places. At its peak, more than 1.7 million homes and businesses lost power across New Jersey and Long Island - including 575,000 PSE&G customers.

Our goal always is to restore power safely and as quickly as possible. PSE&G began preparing for this storm last week and currently has nearly 3,300 personnel, including tree-trimming crews and utility lineworkers, dedicated to restoring customers. That number includes mutual aid workers called in from across the U.S. and Canada as forecasters warned that the storm would have a severe impact on the region.

As of Thursday afternoon, power has been restored to more than 475,000 PSE&G customers, and our crews will be working around the clock until every customer who lost power is turned back on. Crews are assigned to restore critical facilities first - such as hospitals and emergency responders - followed by outages affecting the largest numbers of customers, then addressing outages affecting smaller numbers or individual customers.

We expect that 85% of all affected PSE&G customers will be restored by the end of Friday, with remaining outages restored sometime over the weekend, and possibly into Monday. While that effort continues, our teams are setting up customer outreach and comfort stations in heavily affected areas.

Tropical Storm Isaias' impact on customers was historic - causing more outages than any weather event in recent years. Our customer call centers worked throughout Tuesday and into the night, in New Jersey experiencing a month's worth of call volume in less than 24 hours. In some areas, the storm's impact on telecommunication networks and computer systems also affected our ability to respond to customer calls or update our online outage maps as quickly as we wanted.

When extreme weather strikes, one of the best ways to communicate with us is through our mobile apps, which help customers report outages and receive status updates for estimated restoration times. In New Jersey, more than 50,000 new app downloads occurred just before or during Tuesday's storm. I encourage every customer to take advantage of this service.

Our restoration crews are working tirelessly, and we are thankful for your patience.

Until every customer affected by Tropical Storm Isaias is restored, we want you to know we are here for you. From tree removal to repairing poles and wires on your street to strengthening critical infrastructure serving your communities, we're doing everything we can to restore power to your home safely and as quickly as possible.

Thank you.

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