Update, 6:30 p.m.: In Montville, 62 Percent Still Have No Power

If you can find a way to log onto CL&P's website today - from your phone? from a friend's house? - you should be able to find out when  electricity is projected to be restored to your area.

As of this evening, 62 percent of customers in Montville are still without power. To see a chart of the outages, click here.

Here are some of the numbers from nearby towns;

• In Ledyard, 81 percent are without power tonight.
• Lebanon, 89 percent.
• Griswold, 68 percent.
• Groton, 47 percent.
• North Stonington, 80 percent.
• Waterford, 40 percent (but there's sewage backing up into houses there. Click to read that story).

Power has been restored to many towns in the northwest and southwest parts of the state.

To find the status of your own electricity, click here. You can use your CL&P User ID and password if you have one, or your account number and zip code, or your phone number and primary ID. Fill in the form and you should be able to find out when the power will go on in your home.

CL&P President Jeff Butler made the promise about projections in a morning conference call with reporters.

He also promised “a significant shift in resources” today to areas that have towns still largely without power, specifically communities in eastern Connecticut where residents and officials have complained that they feel forgotten by the state’s largest utility company. 

“We’re shifting crews around the system to the harder hit areas,” Butler said. “I don’t have specific numbers but it’s a significant number and we’ll be putting that information together and sharing it with the customers in those towns.”

He said CL&P remains “100 percent committed” to restoring power to all its customers as quickly as it can. But he acknowledged that the company’s inability to provide more concise information is a mounting concern among those still in the dark.

“They just want to know when they are going to have their power restored. We understand that anyone who doesn’t have a restoration projection is frustrated.”

He said the company also continues to project that all but about 100,000 of CL&P’s customers will have their power back by Saturday and that everyone will have their power fully restored by Wednesday, Sept. 7.

In an apparent reaction to mounting criticism from officials and residents in eastern Connecticut, the company is moving more work crews into that region of the state, which was hard hit by Irene.

By the end of today, Butler said, the company expects to have 560 crews in eastern Connecticut towns. Some communities in that area are completely or nearly completely without power, as are some towns in central Connecticut, including Chester and East Haddam. Large swaths of East Hampton and Marlborough remain without power and CL&P’s website and information line gives no estimate of when those towns will be fully restored.

Butler said the website will be updated today to include power-restoration projections for those areas.

Getting more information on the site, Butler said, “has been a critical focus.”

There are currently 220,000 customers still without power in the state, he said. CL&P will have 1,151 crews working throughout the day and will have 1,200 crews in the state by tomorrow. The company is hiring utility workers from as far away as Colorado and Washington, flying them in by chartered planes in some cases.

Gov. Malloy, visiting Ledyard, met with an angry crowd of people who felt that CL&P was giving them the runaround. To read that story, click here.

Montville editor Carrie Jacobson contributed to this story.