To help enhance service reliability for customers, Jersey Central Power & Light is continuing construction work this summer and throughout the remainder of 2016 on distribution and transmission infrastructure projects totaling approximately $387 million in its northern and central New Jersey service areas.
To date, more than $233 million of the total has been spent on a variety of projects, including completing the final phase of a 115-kilovolt (kV) transmission line that runs through Mercer, Middlesex and Monmouth counties, upgrading 40 distribution circuits, completing a substation expansion in Morris County and trimming trees along more than 2,000 miles of lines. Other scheduled work includes 54 additional circuit upgrades, installing equipment that automatically switches from one circuit to another when a problem is detected, upgrading voltage controls, and inspecting and replacing utility poles.
"Last year JCP&L experienced its best service reliability in over a decade and our goal is to make our system even better," said Jim Fakult, president of JCP&L. "The 2016 projects feature major enhancements to the transmission system that delivers the energy that businesses, industries and residents across northern and central New Jersey expect. These proactive upgrades increase the resiliency of our system and help further minimize the duration and frequency of service interruptions."
JCP&L projects completed, underway or planned in 2016 include:
- Completed construction on the final phase of a new 11.5 mile, 115-kV transmission project from a substation in Englishtown to one in Manalapan at a cost of $17.7 million in 2016. The project will benefit nearly 34,000 customers in Mercer, Middlesex and Monmouth counties.
- Completing a project to enhance and expand a substation in Morris County at a cost of $16.6 million in 2016.
- Completing the substation expansion project in Old Bridge at a cost of $4.6 million in 2016.
- Starting construction of a new 16-mile, 230 kV transmission line from a substation in Howell to a substation in Neptune at a cost of $94.1 million in 2016. The project includes installing five one-ton circuit breakers.
- Upgrading more than 90 distribution circuits at a cost of nearly $6 million in a variety of communities to enhance service reliability. The improvements – adding animal guards, spacer cable, fuses, reclosers and adding new wire – are expected to reduce outages on distribution circuits that serve 180,000 JCP&L customers.
- Completing flood protection measures and installing monitoring devices at 19 substations.
- Replacing underground distribution cables in multiple areas.
- Performing infrared scans on more than 358 circuits to detect equipment in need of replacement and proactively perform the work.
- Inspecting and proactively replacing, if needed, more than 28,000 utility poles.
- Inspecting more than 1,200 reclosers and nearly 5,000 capacitors to proactively identify and replace equipment if necessary.
