电力公司如何让飓风后的纽约重现光明

    那的确是一个黑漆漆、暴风雨肆虐的夜晚。

    10月29日，飓风桑迪袭击纽约城的当晚，遭遇Consolidated Edison供电中断的不仅仅是曼哈顿第39街以南很多地区，还包括Con Ed的总部。

    Con Ed的员工不得不乘橡皮筏沿着洪水浸泡的Avenue C一路向北，穿行于飘浮的汽车间，营救被困在东13街瘫痪电站的同事们。在Con Ed总部，工程师们为恢复停运的电厂，冒险采用快捷方式，最终获得了成功。假如适得其反，纽约人可能要等到下周三才能亮灯。

    而且和我们大家一样，飓风桑迪过去这么些天，Con Ed的燃油也已几近告罄。

    即便如此，通过不间断的辛勤努力和无数次精心算计的冒险，Con Ed仍然在不到4天的时间里就恢复了曼哈顿的供电，比它在飓风后第二天承诺的时间早了约12个小时。

    “他们做得非常出色，让曼哈顿的地下电网恢复了运营，”哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）兼职教授、能源问题研究专家罗杰•安德森表示。

    根据对Con Ed首席执行官凯文•布克、他的两位高级副手、几位公司管理人员和应急反应人员的采访，《财富》杂志（Fortune）首次将多个零碎的片段串连成了一段完整的故事：再现了在这场飓风造成纽约城有史以来最严重的洪灾之后，Con Ed实现恢复供电的过程。

    即便是两周后的今天，Con Ed还有很多工作没有完成。还有3,900位Con Ed客户尚未恢复供电，但是，要知道，此次飓风过后最严重时期曾有近百万人断电，相比当时的情况，这个数字已经微乎其微。另有22,000幢建筑和房屋由于遭到非常严重的损毁，Con Ed也无法恢复对其供电。比如，在布鲁克林Red Hook社区的住宅项目中，就有老人或病人被困在没有供暖、供电和电梯服务的高层中。Con Ed称，Red Hook的问题部分在于Con Ed的设备和大楼设备被洪水淹了。上周末，Con Ed估计飓风桑迪给公司造成的损失可能高达5.5亿美元。

    当然，他们也了些错误。Con Ed曾留意提防其他电站进水，但从未料到13街的电站会被淹。这个电站的防洪墙高度是12英尺，比桑迪引发的洪水低大约两英尺。Con Ed还在飓风过后当周打电话给一些客户称，供电已经恢复，后来不得不再打电话，告诉他们，此前的通知无效。一位客户发微博称：“Con Ed，别再玩弄我的感情了！”布克亲自前往威斯特彻斯特致歉。纽约州州长安德鲁•库默一直批评公用事业的飓风应对举措，其中就包括Con Ed。

    但不管怎么说，飓风桑迪过后，Con Ed客户的状况比起附近其他公用事业公司的客户要好多了。飓风后第二天，布克承诺，将在周六晚上之前恢复对曼哈顿的供电。供电从周五开始恢复，当时新泽西州的PSE&G和长岛的LIPA的很多客户仍陷在一片黑暗之中，没有电，何时能恢复供电也不知道。上周末，150名示威者聚集在Long Island Power Authority（LIPA）的门口，指责它的飓风应对举措效率低下。

    Con Ed受益于大部分线路都埋在曼哈顿的街道地下，基本没有受到飓风的损害。但Con Ed的地下电网和被洪水淹没的电站也导致它在试图恢复供电时遇到的工程技术难题远超竞争对手。纽约市场布隆伯格也赞扬了布克和他的团队。

    It was, truly, a dark and stormy night.

    On October 29th, the night Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City, Consolidated Edison lost power not only to much of Manhattan below 39th Street, but to its own headquarters as well.

    Con Ed employees had to take a raft up the flooded Avenue C, weaving in and out of floating cars, to rescue co-workers trapped in the company's crippled East 13th Street power station. Back at headquarters, the company's engineers took a risky short-cut in restoring a downed power plant that ended up paying off. Had it back-fired New Yorkers might have still been in the dark until the middle of the next week.

    And like the rest of us, days after the storm Con Ed nearly ran out of gas.

    And yet, through non-stop work and a number of well-calculated gambles, Con Ed was able to get the power back on in Manhattan in less than four days, about 12 hours faster than the utility promised a day after the storm.

    "They did a wonderful job getting Manhattan's underground network back up and running," says Roger Anderson, who studies energy issues and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

    Through interviews with CEO Kevin Burke, two of his top lieutenants and a handful of the company's other managers and emergency response personal, Fortune has pieced together for the first time the story of how Con Ed was able to turn the lights back on in the wake of a storm that caused the worst flooding in New York City's recorded history.

    Even two weeks later, Con Ed's job is not done. There are still 3,900 Con Ed customers without power, a fraction of a fraction of the nearly million at the height of the storm. Another 22,000 building and houses are so damaged Con Ed can't restore power to them. In the housing projects of Brooklyn's Red Hook, for instance, elderly or sick residents are stuck on high floors with no heat, power or elevator service. Con Ed says the problem in Red Hook is partly to do with its equipment and the equipment in the buildings, which were flooded. Over the weekend, Con Ed estimated Hurricane Sandy will end up costing the company as much as $550 million.

    There were some mistakes. While it watched other stations, Con Ed never anticipated the flooding of its 13th Street power facility. That plant's flood walls at 12 feet proved to be about two feet too short for Sandy. Con Ed also called some customers the week of the storm to tell them that their power was back on, only to call them back and tell them to disregard the message. One customer tweeted, "Coned stop playing with my feelings!" Burke traveled to Westchester to apologize. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been critical of the utilities' response to the storm, including Con Ed.

    But by all accounts, Con Ed's customers fared better in the wake of Hurricane Sandy than those of other nearby utilities. A day after the storm, Burke promised power would be on in Manhattan by Saturday evening. It started coming back on Friday at a time when many customers of New Jersey's PSE&G and Long Island's LIPA were still in the dark, with no power and no idea when it would come back on. Over the weekend, 150 protestors picketed Long Island Power Authority's offices over its response to the storm.

    Con Ed (ED) benefited from the fact that much of its wires, buried under the streets of Manhattan, were mostly untouched in the storm. But Con Ed's underground network and flooded power stations created a more difficult engineering challenge in turning the power back on than its rivals had. Mayor Bloomberg has praised Burke and his team.