My point is that there are real limits to how quickly a utility can restore power. You could have a thousand crews lined up and pre-positioned before the storm starts, and all but a dozen or so are going to be sitting around collecting double-time-and-a-half for the first 12-24 hours while the rest clear downed trees and pull live wires off roads. You can't fix damage you can't get to.

Although major repairs get underway as soon as it is safe, most of those 1,000 crews will continue to sit in their trucks, sipping coffee and making money for the subsequent 12 to 24 hours while assessment is underway. And then you have to factor for the time it will take to actually repair the broken system.

Could Eversource manage this process better and more efficiently? Almost certainly. But eventually, you hit diminishing returns.

After Isaias, IIRC, it took Eversource eight days to get the last customers back on. They had made a bad guess as to how impactful the storm would be, undercommitted restoration resources, and performed poorly during the effort. They got justifiably creamed by PURA. They got slapped with tens of millions in fines and penalties, suffered a reduction of their allowed profitability, and got a whole shitload of unwanted (by them) new laws and regulations.

PURA and the General Assembly got a lot of headlines and tried to come across as tough on the utilities, but here's what no one is telling you: Even if Eversource had prepared correctly and executed its restoration plan perfectly, it would have had power fully restored maybe 24 hours sooner. If it had overcommitted and gone well beyond what its restoration plan specifed, it might have cut that by another day.

Either in that case, there would still have been massive numbers of customers out 48 hours after the storm, and full restoration work have taken six days. Hell, even if they could have gotten it down to five days, customers would have been showing up with pitchforks and torches, calling for heads to roll, after two days without power. And that's just not realistic.