UI Nears Total Restoration

ORANGE, Conn. — August 11, 2020 (7 p.m. EDT) — United Illuminating, subsidiary of AVANGRID, Inc. (NYSE: AGR), announced that nearly all customers impacted by Tropical Storm Isaias have been restored, with fewer than 50 scattered outages remaining due to issues affecting single services. Crews will continue to make repairs and conduct full patrols of the system throughout UI’s service territory to inspect work and make additional repairs as necessary. As this work is completed, the company cautions that some customers may experience intermittent and temporary outages.

Any remaining individual outages are being resolved today except for those that require the customer to rebuild or repair their home or business to accept service; in those cases the Company will work with the customer and their municipality to coordinate reconnection.

The destructive winds and heavy rain associated with Tropical Storm Isaias impacted all 17 cities and towns in UI’s service territory, resulting in more than 1,700 separate outage-causing events. In total, UI’s restoration efforts restored power to more than 123,700 customers and repaired nearly 150 broken poles and more than 1,000 downed wires. Nearly 1,200 field personnel responded to the event, including UI crews, contractors, mutual-assistance partners and the National Guard.

“As with every storm, we planned in advance and marshalled significant restoration resources ahead of its arrival,” said Tony Marone, UI’s President and CEO. “As part of this plan, approximately 25% of our resources were dedicated to our municipalities to clear roads and remove damaged infrastructure to establish site safety. This partnership was essential to the recovery of our communities. Even after we finish restoration for all impacted customers, our work is far from complete. You will continue to see our crews for weeks to come hard at work inspecting and fortifying our systems, particularly where there was extensive damage.”

Marone added: “We are extremely grateful to our customers, the Governor and his team, the local towns and cities, first responders, National Guard and all other partners for their support and open communication during our restoration efforts. It’s evident that we are strongest when we come together as a community.”

As UI made strong progress towards full restoration, the company expanded our work plan to include demobilizing excess resources to other impacted utilities. The assistance provided additional manpower as the utilities work to achieve complete restoration.

UI encourages any customer without power to contact the company at 800.722.5584 (800.7.CALL.UI), at uinet.com or via the UI mobile app to report the issue and allow crews to investigate.

Additional Information:

Storm relief resources can be found by calling Connecticut’s InfoLine at 2-1-1, or by visiting www.211ct.org.

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  • Sarah Warren
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