To help enhance service reliability for customers, FirstEnergy Corp. is continuing construction work this summer and throughout the remainder of 2016 on distribution and transmission infrastructure projects totaling approximately $369 million in Ohio Edison's 34-county service territory.
To date, more than $195 million of the total has been spent on a variety of projects, including installing equipment in existing substations, constructing new substations, installing remote control equipment on circuits, and the inspection and replacement of utility poles.
"By doing proactive upgrades, we enhance the reliability and resiliency of our system, further minimizing the duration and frequency of service interruptions," said Randall Frame, regional president of Ohio Edison. "The work completed in previous years and infrastructure projects underway in 2016 are designed to benefit our customers by making our system the best it can be when it comes to providing safe and reliable electric service."
FirstEnergy projects underway or planned in the Ohio Edison footprint in 2016 include:
- Completing construction on a new transmission substation in the Elyria area to help enhance system reliability. The project is budgeted at approximately $27 million and is scheduled to go online by the end of the year.
- Spending approximately $20 million to expand a substation and rebuild several transmission lines in the Mansfield area.
- Constructing a new 69-kilovolt (kV) transmission line in the Norwalk area at an estimated cost of $11 million.
- Adding new equipment at substations in Kent, Norton, and Brunswick at a cost of about $7.5 million to enhance redundancy and reliability.
- Investing more than $6 million inspecting and replacing distribution poles in Ohio Edison's service area. This inspection process is conducted on a 10-year cycle. More than 58,000 utility poles are scheduled to be inspected in 2016.
- Rebuilding a 138-kV transmission line in Lorain at a projected cost of $5.1 million.
- Constructing a new modular substation in the Lisbon area at a cost of approximately $2.5 million.
- Reconductoring a 138-kV transmission line from Canton to Alliance at a cost of about $10 million.
- Installing remote-control equipment and circuit breaker upgrades at various substations throughout the Ohio Edison area at an estimated cost of $3 million to help reduce the number and duration of power outages customers might experience.
- Replacing a transformer at a substation in Akron at a cost of $1.3 million.
- Replacing a transformer at a substation in Delaware at a cost of $1.6 million.
More than $225 million of the budgeted total will be spent on transmission-related projects owned by American Transmission Systems, Incorporated, a FirstEnergy transmission company.
