New York-based utility unveils plans for delivery system initiative
New York-based utility provider Con Edison has unveiled plans to invest $100 million in Westchester County over the next four years, to bolster overhead electric-delivery systems against severe storms.
“The storms that wrecked our system in March were the continuation of a more-than-decade-long trend of increasingly severe weather events affecting our customers,” Tim Cawley, president of Con Edison, said. “With weather patterns changing and storms becoming more devastating, we want to take every step possible to fortify our equipment and make sure customers have the best restoration information possible so that they can make plans.”
Officials said the endeavor also includes a pilot program to remove hazardous trees on private property while making improvements to storm staffing and customer information flow. The enhancements were developed as the result of recommendations from elected officials and community leaders since the March storms.
“Storms Riley and Quinn devastated Westchester, and the time and effort it took to recover created a dialogue over where we are and what we can do together to make this better,” Westchester County Executive George Latimer said. “We are very happy to hear from Con Edison that eight out of 10 major recommendations that came out of it are things that they are implementing. There is no way to predict the weather, but we know that if we are working in advance and cooperatively we have the best possible chance to not repeat last year.”
The first two winter storms in March, Riley and Quinn, caused 210,000 Con Edison customers to lose electrical service, officials said. As a result, the company had to rebuild its delivery system in Westchester, which is where more than 155,000 of the outages occurred.
