From chaos to clarity: How utilities can speed storm recovery with real‑time storm intelligence

Severe weather events are becoming more frequent and damaging. From hurricanes to ice storms to derechos, utilities need smarter storm tech to restore power safely, efficiently, and with greater precision.

Storms are forming earlier, intensifying faster, and leaving wider damage paths than in years past. And with grid resilience becoming more scrutinized by regulators, insurers, and customers, utilities face mounting pressure to perform.

Last year, Dave Herlong, Ubicquia’s Chief Operating Officer, published a blog highlighting the 'prepare, weather, recover' lifecycle of a major storm, driven by the strength of an intelligent grid. Since then, winter storms, floods, tornadoes, wildfires, and heat waves have caused chaos across the U.S., leading to widespread outages affecting millions of customers. The 2024 hurricane season alone caused an estimated $124 billion in damage, making it the most costly in 25 years.

In July, more than 140,000 customers in PSE&G’s New Jersey operating area lost power because of summer storms and record-breaking heat waves. PSE&G crews had to replace more than 500 transformers. In the Las Vegas Valley, high winds caused outages for over 30,000 NV Energy customers and damaged more than 50 poles throughout Las Vegas.

This year, with NOAA predicting an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season—anticipating 13–19 named storms, including 6–10 hurricanes and 3–5 major hurricanes—everyone is focused on storm preparedness. While utilities have traditionally invested in storm planning and response, new advancements in storm response technology can enhance these efforts with greater accuracy, speed, and situational awareness.

The public also shares that sense of urgency. Confidence in utilities is often influenced not by the storm itself, but by what unfolds in the first 24 hours afterward. Every minute matters, and every mistake—like sending a crew to the wrong place or staging critical equipment miles away—can have a ripple effect on a community.

In today’s digital world, the economic and social impacts are amplified by a heavy reliance on always-on communications, hybrid work environments, online businesses, and critical medical and other vital services compared to just a few years ago.

Evolving technology changes the game

Enter storm response technology: the real‑time sensors, analytics, and situational awareness tools that turn chaotic aftermaths into coordinated actions. In this environment, storm damage assessment isn’t reactive—it’s automated, powered by live grid data streamed into dynamic maps minutes after impact.

Ubicquia Vice President of Business Development and veteran storm damage assessor Charlie Nobles explains clearly: 'If you don’t know where the damage is, you can’t recover quickly.' His experience assessing damage after hurricanes and other large-scale events was often based on limited observations. 'We were trying to rebuild a map of destruction from five pins dropped on a region the size of Rhode Island.'

This was the norm: damage assessors navigating limited visibility and unreliable communications, relay calls trickling in from disconnected crews, and staging areas often set up in the wrong county. Crews might sit idle for hours. Supplies might be missing or mismatched. It was costly, dangerous, and deeply frustrating.

With storm response technology—like LTE-connected pole tilt sensors, lighting controls, and transformer sensors—utilities can detect damage in near real-time. Pole broken? Alert issued. Circuit dead? Current loss flagged. Transformer knocked offline? Outage signature captured and mapped. These aren’t future promises—they’re live tools that can be game changers, adding precision and speed to storm recovery.

The potential of these tools is significant:

• Vastly improved damage location accuracy compared to traditional assessments, especially when using real-time grid data.
• Dispatches tied to accurate data reduce crew idle time.
• Customers receive faster updates and shorter outages.

From moving target to precision

Storm damage is not static—it changes. Recovery decisions must evolve with the data. Storm response technology can generate dynamic, live heat maps of damage as the storm unfolds, and utilities can make informed choices in near real time. That’s a game-changer.

This situational awareness feeds a smarter approach to recovery:

1. Right Location – Live heat maps of damage help utilities zero in on the true impact zones.

2. Right Crew Types – When you know what failed, you know whether to send tree crews, pole teams, or line workers.

3. Right Gear – Asset-level monitoring enables you to pre-stage the right transformers, poles, streetlights, connectors, and gear.

4. Right Speed – With less guesswork, utilities can streamline restoration planning and improve team coordination.

Integrating storm response technology into restoration protocols isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about safety, financial resilience, and public trust. In case studies across the U.S., utilities that modernized their recovery workflows with situational awareness tools report improvements in restoration planning, cost efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

The takeaway: Don’t wait for the next storm to expose recovery weaknesses. Audit your current response protocols. Consider technology that enables real-time monitoring of assets such as streetlights and distribution transformers to build a smarter, more responsive recovery playbook.

With smart infrastructure and real-time storm response technology, utilities can reduce early-stage missteps that ripple across the recovery timeline. By building restoration workflows that are data-driven, accurate, and agile, they not only reduce outage times and costs but also build trust with the communities they serve. In a world of rising climate risks and increasing grid scrutiny, smarter storm recovery isn’t just better—it’s essential to modern utility performance.