The Illuminating Company eyes second phase of smart grid efforts as three-year upgrade completion nears
After three years of modernization work, including smart meters and other automated equipment deployed to substations and power lines in the greater Cleveland area, The Illuminating Company looks to finish out updates of its system this fall.
With completion comes new goals, however, and the company noted this week that it also filed a plan for a second phase of smart grid technology investments. These updates could impact more than 76,000 customers in the region.
“Every project is customized and designed to address the particular reliability needs of each community,” Ed Shuttleworth, president of FirstEnergy’s Ohio operations, said. The Illuminating Company is a FirstEnergy subsidiary. “These upgrades will allow us to restore service to our customers faster following severe weather as well as pave the way for a more robust power system to support different types of energy sources in the years to come.”
For the current project, workers installed equipment upgrades at 10 substations in the greater Cleveland region and updated power lines from those facilities. In all, 193 new automated reclosing devices were deployed, giving the company greater capability to limit the frequency, duration, and scope of service interruptions. The devices act like circuit breakers, shutting off power as soon as trouble is detected but automatically re-energizing any substation or line if safe to do so. This allows problems to be isolated more smoothly, without delay, and for power to continue flowing to others around the problem.
More power lines were added to the company’s web to help reduce the length of outages and reduce the number of customers affected when restoration demands their service be switched to a backup line. These were coupled with nearly 230 new capacitor banks, which will help The Illuminating Company regulate voltage in the region, and more than 150,000 smart meters for customers in Cuyahoga County, giving residents greater transparency along the way.
Following on the heels of all this, The Illuminating Company and other FirstEnergy Ohio utilities filed a plan with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) in July to invest $626 million into further system upgrades over four years. It would also see the introduction of several new pilot programs, subject to PUCO approval.
