Most Eversource customers in Massachusetts who lost power during Monday’s storm should have it back by Tuesday night, an official with the utility said Tuesday.
“Yesterday we were able to restore almost 160,000 customers,” said Craig Hallstrom, Eversource’s president for regional electric operations. “Even though the weather was really tough to work in.”
By the end of the day, Eversource will have roughly 600 crews on the ground in Massachusetts working to restore power.
“We have some more coming in tomorrow,” Hallstrom said. “As of right now, we have about 45,000 customers out. And it’s about 20,000 in our southern Plymouth area,” with the rest in MetroWest.
Hallstrom said “we really expect the majority of our customers to be restored,” on Tuesday. He acknowledged the power outages can be trying, especially during the holiday season.
“So it’s extra frustrating,” he said. “We’re working real hard, we’re bringing in more crews, and I’m really confident that by this evening, the majority of people will be restored.”
About 450 crews were available Monday to respond to power outages, Hallstrom said.
“We saw very quickly Monday that this is bigger than, I think, first thought,” he said. “So we jumped on some other crews and brought them in. And we’ve had to go significant ways — we’ve had to go out to the Midwest and south of us.”
The storm lashed New England with heavy rain and ferocious winds, claiming at least three lives in Massachusetts and Maine and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands.
Shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday, there were 73,000 National Grid customers in Massachusetts without service, mostly in Bristol, Suffolk, Essex, Hampden, Norfolk and Plymouth counties. In Bristol County, power will not be fully restored until Friday, the utility said.
“With the significant damage we’ve encountered, we are terming this a multi-day restoration event,” National Grid spokesman Robert Kievra said. “Since the start of the storm, more than 205,000 customers have had service restored in challenging conditions ... we have reallocated resources to address the hardest-hit areas and are focused on 911 calls, restoring power to critical facilities, including hospitals and schools.”
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.