The Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday approved JCP&L’s new infrastructure investment program that includes more than $202.5 million in the expansion of smart grid technology. The program is called “EnergizeNJ,” and is intended to modernize the grid and provide system resiliency.
JCP&L’s infrastructure investment program will be carried out over a three-and-a-half year period starting July 1 to upgrade the company’s neighborhood electric distribution grid with an increase in automated and remotely controlled devices.
The EnergizeNJ plan “will allow us to reduce the length and number of customers affected by outage events and protect our line workers who are on the front lines of restoring power,” said Doug Mokoid, FirstEnergy’s president, New Jersey.
New Jersey, as well as its neighbors, are facing challenges in the cost of delivering and distributing energy in the region. The state’s challenges include an aging power grid, grid interconnection delays, distribution system constraints, lack of plans for hardening infrastructure, and balancing clean energy goals with affordability. In addition, escalating energy demands include the onset of electric cars, artificial intelligence, and the growth of energy-consuming data centers.
JCP&L’s investment program includes:
Grid Modernization: $20.4 million
- Upgrading of lateral fuses with TripSaver II devices, which can sense temporary abnormalities along power lines, such as a tree contacting power lines, and automatically re-energize the line after the condition has passed.
- Improving solid fuses with remotely controlled reclosers, which allow operators at JCP&L’s control centers to isolate damage and minimize the number of customers affected by an outage.
System Resiliency: $128.9 million
- Optimizing neighborhood power lines by installing new power sources, such as transformers, at substations and splitting up neighborhood circuits to allow for additional operational flexibility, more balanced loads and decreasing the size of some circuits. This can result in fewer customers affected by an outage on that circuit.
- Installation of remotely controlled circuit ties, which allow groups of power lines to be connected together and customers switched from one circuit to another if there is damage on the normal circuit. Power lines will be upgraded to handle additional capacity to allow for these ties.
- Upgrading of aging electromagnetic relays along power lines and in substations with newer, more modern devices.
Substation Modernization: $53.1 million
- Modernizing substation protection relays with newer devices.
- Upgrading devices that act as a bridge between field devices in substations and remote-control centers with newer, more modern devices that provide enhanced data to control center operators.
Matching Projects: Min. $132 million
- Replacement at coastal substations of components susceptible to salt.
- New mobile substations, which can be moved throughout JCP&L’s territory to allow for necessary maintenance or in emergency outage situations.
- Replacement of circuit breakers.
- Construction of new local power lines and associated work at substations.
- Additional remotely controlled circuit ties, in addition to those being done in the System Resiliency program.
- Moving select power lines underground.
