JCP&L Conducts Annual Storm Restoration Drill to Help Employees Prepare for Real-Life Events

Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) recently completed a successful emergency readiness exercise at its Holmdel office, which tested the company’s restoration process in the event of widespread power outages due to severe weather.

The exercise was designed to simulate real-time events, prepare employees for storm restoration, and introduce process enhancements. The items exercised included new actions incorporated following the March 2018 storms.

As part of the training, JCP&L used its Incident Command System (ICS), a nationally recognized and accepted emergency management process used by all levels of government, non-governmental organizations and the private sector to coordinate the response to major storms and other natural disasters.

More than 75 JCP&L employees from the operations, engineering, safety, logistics, communications, external affairs, customer support, facilities, corporate support and planning, and analysis groups participated in the drill, which was observed by representatives from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

“This training exercise helps to further sharpen our skills and gives us an opportunity to test the new tools we have added to enhance our restoration efforts during actual events,” Alex Patton, JCP&L vice president of operations, said. “Along with our ongoing infrastructure enhancements, these exercises are another way we invest in reliability for our customers.”