Dive Brief:

• PSEG-Long Island, which is preparing to take over grid operations from the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), is planning to beef up the storm response system for the territory.
• LIPA's handling of superstorm Sandy led to New York selecting PSEG in 2011 to run Long Island utility operations under a 10-year contract that begins January 1.
• Under its plan, PSEG-Long Island intends to trim more trees, put in place a new logistics plan, install a new automated phone system to respond to calls and spend $30 million on an outage management computer system.

Dive Insight:

Utilities in Massachusetts and Connecticut have come under intense scrutiny for how they handled recent storm outages. With more frequent and stronger storms expected because of the changing climate, utilities around the U.S. are looking closely at their storm management systems and protocols.