CREAM RIDGE, N.J. – An Ocean County legislator is urging state utility regulators to publicly examine New Jersey’s electric grid after widespread power outages left hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity during the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Alex Sauickie (R-Ocean) is calling on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to convene a reliability hearing following severe thunderstorms that knocked out power to more than 200,000 customers statewide. While utilities restored service to many customers over the weekend, tens of thousands remained without electricity as high temperatures settled across New Jersey.
Sauickie argued that the outages raise broader questions about whether billions of dollars in utility investments approved by state regulators are translating into more reliable service for ratepayers.
“New Jersey families are paying some of the highest utility costs in the nation, and what are they getting for it?” Sauickie said in a statement. He pointed to spoiled food, dark homes, malfunctioning traffic signals and limited restoration information as examples of the hardships many residents experienced over the holiday weekend.
Rather than treating the outages as an unavoidable consequence of severe weather, Sauickie said regulators should view them as a test of the state’s electric infrastructure and the effectiveness of utility oversight.
Under his proposal, the hearing would include testimony from Board of Public Utilities officials, electric utility executives, emergency management personnel, municipal leaders and independent grid reliability experts. Topics would include storm preparation, vegetation management, customer communications, restoration efforts, equipment failures and whether recent reliability investments have produced measurable improvements.
Sauickie is also asking the board to require each affected utility to submit an after-action report detailing the number of customers affected, restoration timelines, staffing levels, mutual aid deployment, infrastructure failures and recommendations for improving future storm response.
The Republican lawmaker also linked the issue to New Jersey’s broader energy policy, arguing that regulators should place greater emphasis on affordability and grid reliability before advancing additional energy initiatives that could increase costs for consumers. This week’s outages come shortly after the BPU voted to reduce the annual summer ratepayer credit from $100 to $25.
“Every time Trenton asks ratepayers for more money, we’re told it’s for reliability, resiliency and modernization,” Sauickie said. “The Fourth of July weekend was the test. Hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans were left in the dark. They deserve to know where their money is going.”
“Storms happen. Heat happens,” he added. “But accountability should happen, too.”
