10:15 PM Wednesday, May 20, 2026. A severe thunderstorm with 60 mph wind gusts is crossing Long Island tonight. For the 1.1 million electric customers served by PSEG Long Island, that storm is about to test a system that, by the utility’s own performance data, has gotten worse at keeping the lights on over the past four years — even as executive pay has climbed.
The Perfect Timing of Bad News
Wednesday was already a rough day for PSEG Long Island’s public image before the first lightning bolt struck.
Newsday published an in-depth analysis of PSEG’s performance metrics and executive compensation today — May 20, 2026 — revealing a troubling divergence: by the measures that matter most to ratepayers, reliability has declined since 2021, while executive bonuses have risen significantly.
The metric at the center of the story is the SAIFI — the System Average Interruption Frequency Index, which measures how often the average customer loses power in a given year. A lower number is better. Under PSEG Long Island’s management, SAIFI has gone in the wrong direction: from 0.679 in 2021 to 0.759 in 2025. That’s an 11.8% deterioration in outage frequency.
The companion metric — SAIDI, the duration of outages — has barely moved. Average outage length held nearly flat: 80.5 minutes in 2021 versus 82 minutes in 2025, after briefly improving in the years between.
To translate this into plain English: Long Island customers are losing power more often than they were four years ago, and when the lights go out, they’re staying out just as long.
Meanwhile, according to Newsday’s reporting, PSEG Long Island executive bonuses rose significantly in 2025. The numbers were striking enough to drive coverage on the same day the island is facing one of its most severe May storm events in recent memory.
What Tonight Means for Long Island Customers
The storm now crossing Long Island is no ordinary weather event. The National Weather Service Forecast Office for New York issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch covering Nassau and Suffolk Counties this evening, with meteorologists warning of wind gusts up to 70-80 mph in the strongest cells. The system is also producing large hail, extremely frequent lightning, flash flooding, and isolated tornado-strength rotation in some segments.
This is exactly the type of storm that overwhelms utility infrastructure:
- Wind at 70 mph can snap limbs, topple trees onto distribution lines, and down poles outright
- Lightning strikes to transmission equipment cause immediate localized outages
- Flooding can damage underground cable infrastructure, pad-mounted transformers, and substation equipment
- Ground saturation makes it easier for trees — their root systems weakened by rain-soaked soil — to topple and bring lines with them
The combination creates multi-day restoration scenarios in the worst-affected pockets. After Hurricane Isaias in 2020, PSEG Long Island left hundreds of thousands of customers without power for up to a week. Tonight’s storm is not Isaias-scale. But it is hitting a grid that, by PSEG’s own numbers, is failing customers more often than it used to.
Meteorologist Mike Wankum noted that the heavy rain associated with tonight’s system will continue tracking east across Long Island until approximately 2 AM Thursday. For Suffolk County residents from Babylon to Brentwood to Riverhead to the Hamptons, the worst of the overnight conditions are still ahead.
A Utility Under Multiple Pressures
PSEG Long Island’s credibility is strained on multiple fronts tonight, and not all of them involve weather.
Earlier this week, the utility was facing separate backlash over aggressive debt collection practices that sparked community outrage — including shutoffs and collection actions against low-income customers. PSEG publicly apologized, launched an internal review, and halted shutoffs for collection. The Long Island Power Authority board passed a resolution committing to a two-year review of customer service complaints to “identify patterns, risk, and areas where reforms may be needed.”
The Long Island Power Authority — the public agency that owns the electrical grid — contracts with PSEG Long Island to operate the system. That arrangement has long been controversial. LIPA ratepayers have questioned whether they’re getting sufficient value from a management contract that costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The Newsday reporting on worsening reliability metrics and rising executive bonuses published today adds new fuel to that ongoing debate.
The Numbers You Should Know Tonight
If you’re a Long Island customer watching the storm roll in, here’s the context:
PSEG Long Island serves approximately 1.1 million electric customers across Nassau County, Suffolk County, and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. The territory encompasses some of the most storm-exposed real estate on the Eastern Seaboard: coastal communities on the South Shore are vulnerable to flooding, tree canopy in the heavily wooded North Shore towns is prone to wind damage, and the eastern forks — the Hamptons and the North Fork wine country — are essentially at the end of a long, thin distribution line with limited redundancy.
When outages hit in those eastern communities, restoration times have historically been among the longest on the system. During major storms, PSEG deploys mutual aid crews from utilities across the mid-Atlantic and New England. The question is always whether they can mobilize fast enough.
On a normal day, PSEG Long Island responds to outages averaging about 82 minutes in duration. Tonight is not a normal day. Depending on how many simultaneous outages the storm triggers, restoration resources will be stretched and those averages will not hold.
What to Do Right Now
Long Island residents should assume power may go out tonight and take immediate action:
Charge everything now. Phone, laptop, portable battery banks, hearing aids, medical equipment that can be charged. Do it before the power cuts.
Fill a container with water. If your home runs on a well pump, it will stop working when the grid goes down. Even for municipal water customers, pressure can drop. Have drinking water stored.
Know your critical medical equipment. If you or a family member depends on powered medical devices — CPAP, oxygen concentrator, infusion pump — contact PSEG Long Island now to ensure you’re on the Medical Baseline program and flag your address for priority restoration.
Never use a generator indoors. Carbon monoxide from generators kills people every storm season. Run generators outside, far from windows and doors.
Check on elderly neighbors. Power outages in hot or cold weather are life-threatening for isolated seniors. A knock on the door tonight could save a life.
How to Report and Track Outages
- PSEG Long Island outage hotline: 1-800-490-0075
- Outage map: psegliny.com/outages-safety/outage-map
- Text reporting: Text OUT to 800-490-0075
- Online: pseg.com/longisland
- Road hazards: 511ny.org or call 511
- Emergencies: 911
The Bigger Picture
There is a pattern here that Long Island ratepayers and elected officials should not ignore. PSEG Long Island’s management contract is up for review periodically, and LIPA has the authority — and the mandate — to demand performance improvements as a condition of continued operation.
The data published today tells a clear story: in four years of operation with rising executive compensation, the system has gotten more prone to outages, not less. The SAIFI number doesn’t lie. Outage frequency is up 11.8%. If anything, the storm tonight will generate more data points — more outages, more customers affected, more restoration delays to measure and compare against peer utilities.
Long Island has been through devastating storms: Sandy in 2012. Isaias in 2020. Each time, the response has been criticized. Each time, promises of improvement were made. The worsening SAIFI trend suggests those promises have not translated into durable infrastructure resilience.
Tonight, with 60 mph winds crossing the island, is another test. We’ll have the data when it’s over.
Stay safe. Check your neighbors. Keep this page bookmarked for updates.
Sources: Newsday (PSEG reliability data and executive compensation, May 20, 2026); NWS Forecast Office New York (severe thunderstorm watch, May 20, 2026); NewsX (NYC severe thunderstorm watch, May 20, 2026); AccuWeather (storm forecast, May 20, 2026).