The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday approved Public Service Electric & Gas‘ Infrastructure Advancement Program. The state’s largest utility is expected to invest $511 million over four years, creating hundreds of well-paying jobs and helping stimulate the New Jersey economy.
Customers will benefit from the settlement, too, as they will be provided with better reliability and the improvements made will help meet their changing needs.
The IAP also includes “Last Mile” investments that will begin preparing the grid for the rapid transition to electric vehicles and enable a greater blend of renewable energy resources by increasing the reliability of the state’s electric grid down to the street and neighborhood level.
“The Infrastructure Advancement Program is the next step forward in our efforts to meet our customers’ changing needs,” PSE&G President Kim Hanemann said. “Homes now are more important than ever to people’s daily lives, playing the added roles of offices, entertainment centers, classrooms and even fueling stations for electric vehicles. Meanwhile, businesses increasingly rely on e-commerce and electronic devices, and many are considering providing charging stations for their EV-driving customers and employees.
“The program is another step toward realizing PSEG’s Powering Progress vision, in which our customers use less energy, and the energy used is cleaner and delivered more reliably than ever.”
The program includes:
- Modernizing electric circuits;
- Upgrading five aging electric substations and four aging natural gas metering and regulating stations; and
- $234 million of last mile improvements to provide residential areas with greater reliability.
The IAP continues PSE&G’s work to update its distribution systems to make them more reliable, and resilient to increasingly severe storms. PSE&G’s initiatives to protect New Jersey communities and customers from extreme weather conditions were recognized last week by the Edison Electric Institute, which awarded the utility the 2022 Edison Award, the electric utility industry’s highest honor.
For a typical residential electric and gas customer, the proposal’s bill impact would be about $1.50 per month, or approximately 0.75%, in 2026. It’s worth noting that a typical residential electric and gas customer’s current bill is now 21% lower than a decade ago, or about 36% lower when taking inflation into account.
