Tropical Storm Elsa made its landfall along Florida’s coast yesterday at a wind speed of 65 miles, thereby becoming the first hurricane of 2021’s Atlantic hurricane season. Although initially deemed as a Category 1 hurricane, after making landfall on the west coast of Florida, Elsa has lost steam.
After passing through Florida where it unleashed heavy rain and flooding, Elsa is next set to hit the U.S. states of Georgia and South Carolina.
Elsa’s Impact on Florida
More than 18,000 utility customers in Florida suffered power cut in late evening on Jul 7, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us. As per major media sources, Florida governor Ron DeSantis declared at a press conference that 26,000 customers witnessed power outage across Florida due to Elsa.
Moreover, many roads across the state were flooded by the heavy downpour caused by Elsa, which might cause delay in restoration activities by utility providers.
Where’s Elsa Headed Now?
As stated by the National Hurricane Center, Elsa is closing in on Georgia’s coastal line and will next hit the Carolinas as it heads northeast. Parts of Georgia and South Carolina are projected to witness 2 to 4 inches of rain, with isolated total of 6 inches.
Connection Between Hurricanes & Utilities
Catastrophic storms are usually accompanied by wind gusts, which snap wires and topple electricity poles and trees, resulting in costs for restoration. Such catastrophic storms disrupt operations of electric power
utilities
and also sometimes damage natural gas pipelines.
Naturally, whenever a hurricane or a storm like Elsa hits, utility companies come in the spotlight.
Utility Stocks to Watch
Considering the aforementioned developments, let us turn our attention toward utility stocks that have either being impacted by Elsa or are expected to get impacted. Each of these stocks carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
Duke Energy
DUK
supplies electric service to approximately 1.7 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in Florida. It strategically staged about 3,000 of its crew members, contractors, tree specialists and other personnel from Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and the Carolinas in advance of the storm. At the peak of the storm on Jul 7, there were 7,345 customers of Duke Energy who suffered outages. The company’s crew has restored more than 28,000 storm outages.
NextEra Energy
’s
NEE
subsidiary, Florida Power & Light (FPL) serves more than 5 million customer accounts or an estimated over 10 million people across the state of Florida. FPL has more than 7,000 personnel for responding to outages caused by Tropical Storm Elsa.
Dominion Energy
D
supplies electricity to approximately 758,000 customers in the central, southern and southwestern portions of South Carolina. Per media sources, the company has stated that it has additional crew and resources to manage the impact of the storm, which is scheduled to reach the coasts of South Carolina on Jul 8.
Southern Company
’s
SO
largest subsidiary, Georgia Power serves a total of 2,635 retail electric customers in the state of Georgia. Georgia Power has mobilized crews from other parts of the state to assist in restoration efforts in areas expected to be impacted by the storm.
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