Nearly 4,900 West Penn Power Customers Will
Benefit from the Upgrades
GREENSBURG, Pa., Oct. 23,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstEnergy Pennsylvania
Electric Company (FE PA), a
subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) doing business as West
Penn Power in western Pennsylvania, is upgrading its power system in
Allegheny County to help prevent
lengthy service interruptions, particularly during severe weather.
The work includes installation of remote-controlled devices along
neighborhood power lines serving nearly 4,900 customers in
Oakdale, North Fayette Township and Findlay Township.
John Hawkins, FirstEnergy
President, Pennsylvania: "We
continue to invest in new technologies and equipment to provide
safe and dependable electric service for our customers. This
project features remote-controlled switches that will allow us to
quickly reconfigure our network when a power line is out of
service, temporarily switching customers to a pair of nearby power
lines to keep their lights on while our utility crews make repairs.
This is particularly important for these communities, where trees
beyond our permitted trimming areas in woods directly outside a
local substation frequently contact our electrical lines and
disrupt power."
Thousands of homes and businesses in the area will benefit from
the installation of 12 new remote-controlled reclosing devices
along three neighborhood power lines to help limit the frequency,
duration and extent of service interruptions. When an outage
occurs, the reclosers will operate to isolate damage and
temporarily transfer customers from a 20-mile-long line that serves
Enlow Road, the Steubenville Pike from Hawthorne Drive to Airport
Parkway, Hankey Farms, Brooketree Court and Hawthorne Manor to two
nearby lines from a substation near Oakdale.
The new recloser devices:
- Work like a circuit breaker in a home that shuts off power when
trouble occurs, with the added benefit of
automatically reenergizing a substation or power line within
seconds for certain types of outages to keep power safely flowing
to customers.
- Are safer and more efficient because they often allow utility
personnel to automatically restore service to customers instead of
sending a crew to investigate.
- Isolate the outage to that area and limit the total number of
affected customers if the device senses a more serious issue, like
a fallen tree on electrical equipment.
- Quickly pinpoint the location of the fault and help utility
personnel better understand the cause of the outage to help speed
restoration.
Photos of newly installed devices on Steubenville Pike
near Oakdale and another on a
trailer awaiting installation are available on Flickr.
The 12 new devices replace equipment that could only be operated
by line workers driving to each location. Crews installed the
reclosers throughout the summer, with most in place and
operational. The project is expected to be completed by
November.
The distribution network in this area was ideally situated for
the new remote-controlled reclosers because equipment necessary to
transfer customers to neighboring power lines is already in
place.
The project is part of FE PA's
Long Term Infrastructure Improvement Plan (LTIIP II), a
$147 million initiative to accelerate
capital investments in the electric distribution system serving the
West Penn Power area over five years to help ensure continued
electric service reliability for customers.
LTIIP is part of Energize365, FirstEnergy's grid
evolution program focused on investing $26 billion between 2024 and 2028 across its
six-state footprint to create a smarter, more secure grid that that
delivers the power customers depend on today while also meeting the
challenges of tomorrow.
West Penn Power serves approximately 725,000 customers in 24
counties within central and southwestern Pennsylvania. Follow West Penn Power on X
@W_Penn_Power and on Facebook at facebook.com/WestPennPower.
FirstEnergy is dedicated to integrity, safety, reliability and
operational excellence. Its electric distribution companies form
one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems,
serving more than six million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, West Virginia,
Maryland and New York. The company's transmission
subsidiaries operate approximately 24,000 miles of transmission
lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Follow
FirstEnergy online at firstenergycorp.com and on X
@FirstEnergyCorp.
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SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp.