One Year After Christmas Stroll Power Outage, Infrastructure Upgrades Completed

Nearly a year after the power outage that struck downtown Nantucket during the annual Christmas Stroll weekend, causing millions in losses for island businesses, utility provider National Grid says it has completed a major infrastructure upgrade that will hopefully prevent similar occurrences this year and in the future.

With weeks to go before thousands of visitors and residents gather in downtown Nantucket for the 2025 Christmas Stroll, National Grid announced that a $6 million underground project to ensure redundancy and reduce the frequency and duration of outages is finished. The project involved upgrading underground cables and infrastructure, distributing the network more effectively while providing backup options in the case of an outage, enabling faster restoration.

"Approximately 400 customers in the downtown area will directly benefit, including retailers, restaurants, the Police Department, and municipal offices," said National Grid's Bob Kievra, the company's director of corporate affairs for Massachusetts. "Another 1,400 customers will indirectly benefit from cable replacement."

In the aftermath of last year's crippling power outage, National Grid blamed the outage on two sections of underground electric cable that failed. Sources with knowledge of what happened told the Current that at least 500 feet of underground cable along South Water Street from the Sunken Ship store to The Dreamland theater became compromised and needed to be replaced. Once it was removed and the new cable was installed, the crews still needed additional time for splices and connections, resulting in an outage that lasted 27 hours at the peak of the Christmas Stroll weekend.

As the island prepares for this year's big holiday weekend, which runs from December 5th to the 7th, Kievra stated that National Grid has been preparing by meeting with local officials to review assets, staffing, and the schedule of weekend activities. National Grid’s plan to preclude another outage - or limit the impacts if one occurs - include the following:

• Pre-stage specialized crews, equipment, and materials to Nantucket prior to Christmas Stroll
• Have National Grid’s on-Island crews be on-call for the duration of the event
• Coordination with Nantucket's emergency response officials on the deployment of emergency operations assets during the duration of the Stroll
• Keep on-Island generation assets that were deployed earlier this year in place and available to ensure continued reliability, if needed. Those additional generators help ensure that weather conditions, transportation issues or sudden load changes do not impact the company's ability to provide service to Nantucket residents and businesses

The 2024 power outage, which affected nearly 200 businesses from the north side of Main Street to Broad Street during a 27-hour period at the peak of the Christmas Stroll weekend, cost those establishments an estimated $3 million in lost revenue, according to Nantucket Chamber of Commerce executive director Peter Burke. The impacts were described as "absolutely crushing."

In July, the Chamber announced that it had awarded grants from the “Lights Out Stroll 50” Relief Fund to 14 applicants affected by the power outage. Burke declined to disclose the amount of money that was raised and distributed, but said the money was “equally distributed” amongst the 14 applicants.