Dick Wernsing (c) and Ed Gray (r) of PSE&G talk about the renovations proposed for the company’s facility in Sewaren. STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER ERIC SUCAR A fter superstorm Sandy pummeled the region on Oct. 29, millions of New Jersey residents who went without electricity for extended periods of time often directed their anger toward power companies.
To quell the effects of major storms in the future, Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) has submitted a five-year $2.6 billion plan, dubbed Energy Strong, to the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU). If all goes as planned, PSE&G would undertake another $1.3 billion in upgrades after the first wave of improvements.
The proposed renovations focus on protecting infrastructure from flooding and windstorms, and the management of data, said Dick Wernsing, PSE&G’s manager of electric asset strategy.
“This whole program is established on the benefit of reducing customers’ hours of outage,” Wernsing said during a June 28 tour of the company’s generating facility in the Sewaren section of Woodbridge.
The utility plans to strengthen its defenses around the distribution station in Sewaren, which sits near the Kill van Kull, and other substations, Wernsing said. He said transformers and other equipment would be raised a foot above the height that is required by flood maps. A floodwall would also safeguard the station, he said.
The Sewaren station demands a high level of security because it supplies power to substations, Wernsing said.
During Sandy, the site took on several feet of water, which spurred service delays for customers, Wernsing said.
“The impact of flooded stations pulls hundreds of people away from restoring customers,” Wernsing said. “The rest of the restoration process is slowed.”
Ed Gray, PSE&G’S director of transmission and distribution engineering, said the Sewaren site could not be moved to higher ground because of its size.
“We really can’t move big stations like this,” Gray said. “This is all fine here, but nobody wants it in their backyards.”
New technology has allowed PSE&G to skip steps in the distribution process in order to reduce the length of outages, he said.
The company’s fleet of 800,000 utility poles could be upgraded to better withstand high winds, Wernsing said. Larger bases that support stronger and taller poles would do the trick, he said.
If an area has too many trees, technicians would either install wiring in a neighboring spot or underground, Wernsing said. But a total move to underground infrastructure would cost too much time and money, Gray said.
“It’s really an expensive way to solve a problem,” Gray added.
Energy Strong also includes “smart relays” that would feed information on volts, amps and the distance to a break in a circuit, Wernsing said. That enables the company to mobilize the correct number of linemen, Wernsing said.
When tied with information from customers, municipal officials and GPS data, workers can use PSE&G’s internal system to determine the locations of downed wires, Wernsing said.
He said the company plans to install fiberoptic wires in all of its stations to enhance in-house communications. Gray said that would lessen the need for the time-consuming, on-the-ground surveys that employees had to conduct after Sandy.
After that, algorithms would be used to comb through the heap of data to decide the most effective plan of action, Wernsing said. “That should make us a lot more efficient,” he said. Kristine Snodgrass, a PSE&G spokeswoman, said the utility plans to use social media and text-messaging to better communicate with customers during outages. A report from the BPU regarding PSE&G’s response to Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 focused largely on the company’s troubles with public outreach, Gray said.
Overall, the fixes should result in a 39 percent improvement in reaction time during major storms, when compared to the company’s response to Sandy, Gray said. About 1.9 million customers lost power due to the storm and for some, the lights remained out for two weeks.
The costs of the proposed upgrades are not expected to affect rates due to other items that will soon be removed from customers’ bills, Gray said.
“Are the rates higher than they would have been? Yes. But they’re not going to be higher than they are today,” Gray said.
Wernsing added that the opportunity to limit future damages is now, and the state will ultimately benefit from more reliable electric service during big storms.