HOLMDEL - Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L), a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., has begun construction on a comprehensive project designed to help prevent or minimize the impact of power outages for more than 5,000 northern New Jersey customers.
The work will take place along multiple power lines running from JCP&L's Cozy Lake substation, benefitting customers in Jefferson and Rockaway Townships in Morris County, West Milford Township in Passaic County and Hardyston and Sparta Townships in Sussex County.
"The investments we are making in these local communities are some of the largest and most extensive enhancements in our New Jersey Reliability Improvement Program," said Doug Mokoid, FirstEnergy's President, New Jersey. "We are taking an all-of-the-above approach to enhancing service reliability by conducting work to address vegetation management, line resiliency, load balancing and incorporating more flexibility and redundancy to our system."
Enhanced tree-trimming work, including the removal of diseased or dead trees, is currently underway along the power line routes. Several grid infrastructure enhancements are also slated under this project, including:
- Upgrading nearly 11.5 miles of existing infrastructure with thicker, stronger poles and overhead wire that can safely carry more electricity and provide more resiliency in storms.
- Constructing more than three miles of new underground lines.
- Installing nearly 60 additional devices that can help isolate damage and restore customers when outages do occur. This includes new TripSaver devices, which sense temporary abnormalities along power lines, such as a tree branch bouncing off lines, and automatically reenergize the line after the condition has passed without having to send a crew to investigate.
- Transferring more than 2,400 customers to neighboring power lines, placing them closer to substations to reduce the risk of outages and provide improved load balancing and flexibility if outages occur.
As part of the work, portions of lines along Route 23 will be moved closer to the road and fiberglass poles and crossarms will be installed to provide enhanced resiliency against tree-related outages.
The work is part of JCP&L's New Jersey Reliability Improvement Program, a two-phase effort to enhance reliability for customers on high-priority lines selected based on historical outage data. The first phase includes a minimum of $95 million in upgrades over three years.
