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New Jersey utility Public Service Electric & Gas Company (PSE&G) is the latest energy provider to take the lessons of Hurricane Sandy and earlier major storms to heart. The utility on Tuesday submitted a proposal to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for $3.9 billion to protect and harden its electric and gas systems against future megastorms.
The proposal, referred to as "Energy Strong," includes measures to directly protect equipment and systems and smart grid technologies for monitoring systems operations better to more quickly respond to outages.
"It's clear Sandy, Hurricane Irene and the October ice storm in 2011 represent extreme weather patterns that have become commonplace," said PSE&G chairman and CEO. "It's equally clear that how we live and do business is so dependent on energy that any outage is hard to tolerate. Sandy was a defining event for all of us; the state's entire energy infrastructure needs to be rethought in light of weather conditions that many predict will continue to occur."
Sandy was an incredibly hard way for PSE&G and other affected utilities to learn. A National Hurricane Center report released Tuesday said Sandy was the second costliest in U.S. history since 1900, and that the massive storm caused 72 deaths in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, certainly the largest number of U.S. deaths attributed to a tropical cyclone outside the southern states since Hurricane Sandy in 1972. The report also put preliminary damage estimates at about $50 billion, with over 650,000 homes demolished or damaged by the storm that left more than 8 million utility customers with no electricity for varying periods of time.
PSE&G said 2 million of its 2.2 million customers lost power because of damaged switching and substations, damaged poles and electrical equipment and downed trees that pulled power lines down with them.
What PSE&G asked regulators for is initial funding of $2.6 billion during the first five years; and since some improvements will take longer to deploy, the utility may ask for an additional $1.3 billion in the following years to wrap up the program.
And PSE&G says customers won't notice it on their power bills. "This is the right time to make these investments. With significantly lower gas prices and retiring some transitional charges, we can essentially make these critical investments without raising bills," said Ralph LaRossa, PSE&G president and COO.
Some components of the proposal include:
· $1.7 billion to elevate, relocate or protect switching and substations affected by recent storms and those in newly designated flood zones
· $1.04 billion for replacement and modernization of 750 miles of low-pressure cast iron gas mains in or close to flood areas
· $454 million for smart grid technologies to enhance systems monitoring and outage response
· $200 million to develop redundancy in the system to reduce outages
The company said if it had those protections are in place before another storm like Sandy, the lights would stay on for 800,000 customers who lost power during Sandy and outage restoration would be faster for remaining customers.
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