Peco Energy Co. on Tuesday released 700 out-of-town utility workers to get reassigned to restore services to hard-hit areas around New York, but said it still had 4,000 workers on call to respond to a winter storm that is forecast to hit the area Wednesday night.
"If the nor'easter comes, we have more crews on the system than we've had at anytime in history," said Denis P. O'Brien, senior executive vice president for Exelon Corp., Peco's parent company.
Peco reported only scattered outages on its system Tuesday. The company, which serves 1.6 million customers in Philadelphia and five suburban counties, said Sandy disrupted service to 850,000 customers.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday predicted a new storm could pummel some of the hardest-hit areas from last week's storm with gusts up to 60 miles per hour Wednesday night.
"We're monitoring it, and gearing up for any other weather event," said Frank Tedesco, a spokesman for Atlantic City Electric Co.
The South Jersey utility said it restored service to nearly all 220,000 customers who were knocked out, except about 5,000 buildings that need repairs before the company can safely reconnect power.
Public Service Electric & Gas Co., New Jersey's largest utility whose northern operations were slammed by Sandy, said it aimed to restore 90 percent of its 1.7 million outages by Wednesday morning.
The Edison Electric Institute said that an army of 67,000 utility workers responded to the massive storm. The Air Force flew in bucket trucks and crews from as far as Hawaii.
According to the energy department, 8.5 million customers lost power in 21 states.
Contact Andrew Maykuth at 215-854-2947, @Maykuth on Twitter or amaykuth@phillynews.com.
