Mississippi Power wraps up busy 2020 storm season
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on Monday and the record-breaking string of severe storms came on the heels of an active spring tornado season across Mississippi Power’s service territory.
“This has been an extra hectic year for us in terms of responding to severe weather events,” said President and CEO Anthony Wilson. “When you add the pandemic and the required safety protocols, the challenges we faced during each of these crises were numerous. Each time, our team rose to meet those challenges and get the lights back on safely and efficiently.”
The 2020 hurricane season produced 30 named storms, including 13 hurricanes and six major hurricanes. Five of those impacted Mississippi Power customers, most notably Hurricane Zeta. The category 2 storm moved across the company’s Coast Division on Oct. 28, knocking out service to almost half of the company’s customers.
The other storms affecting Coastal Mississippi were Cristobal, Marco, Laura and Sally. In addition, company crews assisted utilities in Pennsylvania and New York City following Isaias, in Lake Charles, La., after Laura, in Mobile after Sally and in Florida after Eta.
Add three tornado events in April that impacted the company’s Pine Belt region and company crews have spent 58 days this year preparing and responding to storm events.
“Through November, we’ve spent 17 percent of our time working severe weather events,” said Fran Forehand, Vice President of Customer Service and Operations. “There are so many moving parts to these restoration efforts and so many opportunities for accidents. Overall, we had no serious injuries and that is a huge accomplishment.”
The cumulative storm restoration efforts produced some interesting numbers: 685 damaged poles replaced along with 2,355 spans of wire and 33 transmission structures.
About 147,500 customers experienced an interruption in service due to a storm with 10,216 outage events. More than 2,700 outside resources from 17 states assisted the company in their restorations.
“We have made significant investments to improve the resiliency of our transmission and distribution systems and we’ve already seen a return on those investments through this busy year of storms,” said Power Delivery General Manager Randall Pinkston. “We’ll never be able to totally stormproof the grid, but we continue to take important steps to strengthen and modernize our systems to help us respond to these events more efficiently and more safely.”
Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), produces safe, reliable and environmentally responsible energy for nearly 190,000 customers in 23 southeast Mississippi counties. With nearly 160 megawatts of approved solar energy capacity, Mississippi Power is the largest partner in providing renewable energy in the state of Mississippi. Visit our website at mississippipower.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
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