CMP News

Central Maine Power Company, 83 Edison Drive, Augusta, ME 04336 (207) 622-NEWS 

Corporate Communications - corpcomm@cmpco.com 

Release: Immediate  

CMP restoration plans complicated by high winds

   AUGUSTA, Maine, March 1, 2010, 11:30 a.m. — Central Maine Power Company (CMP) crews have kept pace with a flood of new outages from today’s strong winds. The company said the bad weather will make it more difficult to meet their goal of restoring power to all customers by tonight. The forecast calls for winds to gust above 40 miles per hour along much of the coast this afternoon, so the company is unsure how much more damage they will see before the winds ease.

New reports of outages caused by falling trees and broken poles have already been received from communities along the mid-coast, adding to the total of 335 broken poles from the recent storm. The utility said it has more than 1,200 workers involved in the storm restoration, including more than 800 field personnel clearing trees, replacing poles, and repairing lines..

As of noon today, the utility reported 15,700 customer were without power, which is up from 11,000 early this morning. The outages from the week-end storm peaked at 133,000 on Friday morning.

Outages by county as of 11:30 a.m.

 Cumberland              5,311
York              3,990
Lincoln              3,481
Sagadahoc              2,307
Knox                 268
Oxford                 238
Waldo                   68
Somerset                   25
Piscataquis                   12
Total            15,700

Click here to see a map of storm outages and restoration progress by town.

Next update: 4:00 p.m.

  About Central Maine Power Company (CMP): Central Maine Power Company, a subsidiary of Iberdrola USA, is Maine’s largest electricity transmission and distribution utility. The company delivers about 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually to more than 600,000 homes and businesses, representing about 80% of Maine’s annual consumer sales of electricity. The company has been ranked #1 in customer satisfaction three times by J.D. Power and Associates. For more information, visit cmpco.com.
 

---CMP---