Jersey Central Power & Light has agreed to implement the recommendations in a report on the Morristown underground electrical network, which was accepted today by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. 

"The report provides a thorough analysis and offers valued recommendations," said Don Lynch, president of JCP&L.  "We worked with the BPU staff and the Special Reliability Master (SRM) who performed the review, as the report was developed and will continue to update them and Morristown officials on our progress."

The report said the underground network meets design, construction and reliability standards for U.S. electric utilities and outlined recommended enhancements to underground equipment and engineering, operations and inspection practices.  Most of the recommendations in the report will be completed in 2012 and many are already under way.

Report recommendations scheduled to be implemented include: 

• Upgrading relays in the Morristown substation feeding the network to shorten restoration times when outages occur 
• Completing a study of a secondary portion of the network to determine if additional fuses are needed to help protect against equipment damage 
• Adding special guards at the Morristown substation to prevent animal-related power outages 
• Replacing two electrical switches in the underground network   
• Conducting a pilot project to investigate available methods for securing manhole covers  
• Providing additional training for employees on vault inspections and data collection to support effective preventative maintenance