JCP&L’s Monmouth County Reliability Project to install air-insulated, high-voltage wires along 10 miles of NJ Transit’s tracks from Matawan through three additional towns to Red Bank cannot improve the reliability of JCP&L’s electric service because its proposed high-voltage line only provides redundant connections between some JCP&L substations.
However, it doesn’t address JCP&L’s distribution plant that connects JCP&L substations to JCP&L customers — precisely where JCP&L’s service restoration capability throughout the Bayshore area proved to be so inadequate after Hurricane Irene and [superstorm] Sandy.
Electric power in my neighborhood was out for 13 days following Sandy, but many calls to JCP&L by my neighbors and myself yielded no visible JCP&L work to restore service. The restoration actions seen in my neighborhood were: 1) Verizon trucks and crews installing two replacement utility poles and 2) an electric repair truck and work crew from Ohio repairing storm-damaged electric connections to several homes (including mine). A genuine Monmouth County Reliability Project would have JCP&L buying additional repair trucks and hiring/training locally based work crews to operate them.
In the 26 years since JCP&L first proposed this project along these same NJ Transit tracks, more efficient home appliances and new lightbulb technologies have produced flat growth in this area’s electric power demand. JCP&L’s Monmouth County Reliability Project does not serve the Bayshore’s public interest because no significant growth in electricity demand exists in this area, and it doesn’t address key restoration deficiencies with JCP&L’s distribution plant.
Anthony Cooper
Vice President
Citizens for Informed Land Use
Holmdel