If Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and Co. prepared a game plan for the Cleveland Browns but instead the Pittsburgh Steelers showed up to play, would they be excused for being pummeled?
In essence, that is what National Grid is asking in relation to its performance during the recent wind storm that left roughly 154,000 Rhode Island customers without power for up to nearly a week.
Of course, if a different NFL team showed up for a game, it would make sense to excuse the locals. Preparations for each game are tailored to each scheduled opponent.
But the weather is not the NFL. Even the best computer models have a certain margin for error, and one must assume that the powerful wind storm that hit the Ocean State was a possibility.
Is it reasonable to expect the state’s dominant utility to have staff to respond to any potential disaster every day of the year? No, it isn’t.
But it is reasonable to expect National Grid to have contingency plans that take into account potential outliers to forecasts, because losing power is a whole lot more important than losing a football game.