Over 6.4 million customers lost power as Hurricane Irene moved up the eastern coast, making landfall on August 27th. With few eastern electric utilities spared, recovery from Irene continues and approximately 580,000 customers were still without power one week after the storm.
Irene caused an estimated $10 billion worth of damages and over 40 deaths. Various stages of destruction still exist from 
North
Carolina all the way to Maine, with damages ensuing from a variety of storm outcomes, ranging from inland rain, flooding, coastal storm surges, and high winds uprooting trees.
Nine utilities using Storm Center were particularly affected by Hurricane Irene. These utilities serve over 11.5 million customers combined, and at the height of the storm damage were working to repair outages to over 1.5 million customers. Service territories include North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, New York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.
Storm Center was put to the test during the hurricane and subsequent stages of recovery, delivering real-time outage information to desktops and smartphones. By displaying outages on a Storm Center map, utilities were able to quickly communicate information such as the number of customers affected, estimated restoration times, dry ice stations, crew status updates, and other critical storm data. Using smartphones, customers were able to stay up to date on outage information even while displaced from their homes.
A utility in the Maryland and Washington D.C. area delivered outage information using their Storm Center smartphone application, with more than 4,000 new app downloads during the hurricane. Another utility in New York saw a sharp increase in visits to their website, with over one million page views during the storm.
Some utilities took advantage of Storm Center’s advanced features including outage history charts, showing number of outages and number of affected customers over the most recent four days. The outage history chart clearly communicates the utility’s progress in restoring power. Other utilities displayed locations of service stations such as dry ice trucks and outreach vans. Storm Center’s ETR manager tool was used to manually update estimated restoration times, making sure the public had the most up-to-date information possible.
Overall, Storm Center withstood the marked increase in demand for outage information throughout the damage assessment and restoration phases. With utilities focusing on restoration efforts, Storm Center acted as a highly reliable communications tool for emergency responders, customers, and the media. As an added benefit, because Storm Center provides customers with up-to-date, outage information, call center traffic was significantly reduced by automatically answering the age old question on everyone’s mind: “when will my power be restored”.
The key to surviving any catastrophic event is to be prepared. During Hurricane Irene, iFactor’s Storm Center outage maps and mobile applications proved once again that providing customers with convenient access to outage information improves overall communications, significantly reduces call center traffic, and greatly enhances customer perception and satisfaction throughout the event.