The state’s major electricity distributors earlier this month took the first in a series of steps to move toward a so-called “smart grid” by seeking federal stimulus money to help finance their planned investments in enabling infrastructure.
PSE&G, Atlantic City Electric and Jersey Central Power & Light plan to invest more than $200 million to build and operate a smarter grid that brings more reliability, security, efficiency and affordability to customers. They are encouraged by a federal government offer to finance up to half their investments in such a system.
Improving a distributor’s response to an outage, for example, is one of the goals of smart-grid technologies, said Richard Wernsing, PSE&G’s top executive responsible for enhancing reliability of service to customers.
PSE&G said it is seeking $76 million in federal support for its $152 million program, which it expects will create 551 new jobs.
One of the ways PSE&G plans to spend its budget is in building 62 new distribution loops, or “advanced loop schemes” with fewer customers in each loop, “reducing the number and duration of power outages in the case of a fault,” according to a statement from the utility.
“When there’s an outage, the utilities today don’t know how many people are out. The smart-grid people will tell them how many people are out, and point them to the exact location and the exact problem,” said Lance Miller, chief of policy and planning at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the state’s electricity regulator.
via Stimulus aims to plug utilities into smarter energy grid – NJBIZ.com.
