In an exclusive interview Saturday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Power President and CEO Paul Bowers and Emergency Operations Director Aaron Strickland discussed the company's response to a sweeping ice storm that knocked out power to some 700,000 customers. (Editor's note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Q: What was the difference between this storm and the one Jan. 28?
Bowers: We had minimal outages (Jan. 28); it was a nonevent for us. This storm was freezing rain collecting on wires and the trees, and that weight just takes down infrastructure or it takes down trees. If you look at a quarter of an inch (of ice), it will have X amount of impact. If you have half an inch, there's a precipitous increase in the number of customers impacted. It goes to an inch or maybe an inch and quarter, which they think they might have gotten in Augusta, the severity of that kind of weight will bring the infrastructure down. The other piece that's different between this storm and three weeks ago is the amount of tree damage that was on customers' property. (Tall trees even disrupted main transmission lines in some areas.) When a transmission line gets impacted, it stops the flow to the distribution network. So you have to get that back up. We had several (main transmission) lines impacted from (fallen) trees that aren't in our right of way.
Q: Where did you expect this latest storm to hit and where did you position your crews?
Bowers: There was a corridor from I-20 to I-85 and east that looked like it was going to be the most intense hit area. So our troops (staged) in the metro (Atlanta) area, and then we started moving troops to stage in Augusta and had troops in the Conyers and Athens area. As the storm started dropping below the I-20 corridor, we repositioned folks and that (started) Monday before the storm hit.
Strickland: 5:30 Monday morning we actually made a mutual assistance call, calling our friends throughout the country for help. The problem was the storm is coming across from Texas and affected Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and coming across here and affecting North Carolina and South Carolina. We got help out of Florida, but the next closest help we could find after that was Texas (and) Ohio.
Q: Many residents south of I-20 and in the Augusta area have said they’re not satisfied with your response, saying it took too long.
Bowers: I take exception to that. We don't want any of our customers inconvenienced. That's a given. We had a tremendous amount of resources — probably 2,000 to 3,000 folks (in south metro Atlanta), to ensure we were restoring services as rapidly as we could. What we were experiencing in that area was a lot of damaged trees and poles. Once our troops were there, they'd see a (damaged) span, get it back in service, and (sometimes a few hours later) it was out again. Another tree fell down. It's perpetual with ice. You have waves of outages that re-occur.
Strickland: We had (about) 37 percent of our storm workers on the Southside; we had about 36 percent or 37 percent (in the Augusta) area.
Q: Some customers said they believe that the northern metro Atlanta area received preferential treatment.
Bowers: There were no (severe) outages in the northern Atlanta area. There were outages to the south. I take exception to that comment, because we are an essential service. We understand that when that is disrupted that it disrupts lives. We're dedicated to get out there as fast as we can. There's no truth to that proposition that we are dedicating resources (differently) in different areas of the state. That is absolutely untrue. I went out to south metro (Atlanta) myself, (and) if you just look at the pictures and see what they had to deal with … if you go down to Augusta and see the pictures from Augusta, it's unbelievable the damage caused by this storm.
Q: Did you have enough resources to respond to this storm?
Bowers: Absolutely. We even probably over-populated with crews. We want that service to come back on. You have over 8,000 (line workers) in this state. … Four thousand are our crews, Georgia Power resources. During Hurricane Katrina, there were 10,000 (line workers) … all across the Gulf Coast, including Gulf Power, Alabama Power, Mississippi Power. And (in Georgia) we had 8,000.
Q: Is there anything, as you see it now, that you would do differently?
Strickland: We're constantly looking at 'What could (we) have done differently?' And I think it was (Friday), we said, "Would (we) have done anything differently, knowing what we knew (during the storm)?' We said, 'Not a dadgum thing.' Today, knowing where the storm hit, I wouldn't have put all those troops on the Northside (of I-20), but all the (early) weather reports on TV and everywhere (predicted severe icing) between I-85 and I-20. So that you can't say, did you do something wrong, that's armchair quarterbacking. But knowing what we knew at the time, I couldn't tell you anything that we would change.
Q: Georgia Power has spent $350 million to invest in smart grid technology and meters over the past several years. Did that technology make a difference?
Bowers: Look at the numbers. Over 700,000 (affected) customers and 650,000 have been restored in 48 hours (to 72 hours). Go back to (the blizzard of 1993), there were 319,000 (customers without power) and it took seven days. You can isolate customers (with outages) better today because of technology, you can have the meters tell us who's (without power) rather than drive down the road to find out. … When 75 percent of the customers we serve in Augusta are impacted by the storm, and lines are on the ground, technology is on the ground as well. But I think when you look at it on a statewide basis, for the 650,000 customers that have service today, I think technology amplified the information and expedited the process.
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