Jersey Central Power & Light Updates Infrastructure Investment Proposal

Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) filed an update to its EnergizeNJ initiative, which includes $930.5 million in infrastructure upgrades and enhancements designed to reduce the frequency and duration of power outages for its customers. 

“EnergizeNJ is one of the most significant initiatives JCP&L has ever put together to enhance service reliability for customers,” said Jim Fakult, President of JCP&L. “It’s important to us that these upgrades not only enhance service by reducing how often you lose power or how long your lights are out, but also do it in a cost-conscious manner.”

The program includes enhancements such as: 

• Limiting the number of power outages by upgrading overhead power lines with stronger wire and poles holding up against stronger storms and making significant substation improvements.
• Reducing some outages by installing advanced technology and smart grid devices, such as automated reclosing devices to detect temporary faults on a line (such as a tree branch bouncing off wires) are clear and automatically re-energize the line as well as adding more remotely-controlled devices.
• Restoring customers faster during outages by standardizing system voltage, building new circuits and installing circuit ties, all of which allow power to be rerouted around damage.
• Creating smaller, more reliable customer pods by building new circuits and tying together existing circuits to provide backup connection options in case of damage. 

At a cost of nearly $1 million per mile, undergrounding large portions of JCP&L’s more than 40,000 miles of distribution and sub-transmission lines will increase electric bills for families and businesses.  

On the contrary, EnergizeNJ will help make data-driven, cost-effective upgrades by selectively undergrounding approximately seven miles of lines in some of the most vulnerable areas, such as immediately outside of substations, providing benefits of enhanced service reliability with lower impacts on customer bills.

JCP&L’s plan distributes the cost of projects over five years, paying for work only after completion. The result is a series of seven smaller impacts on customer bills, ranging from $0.17 to $0.89 per month increases for the average residential customer, paying about $121 per month today. The total increase, five years from now, will add up to approximately $4.07 per month.