PSEG May Ratchet Down Price of Multi-Billion-Dollar 'Energy Strong' Program

Written by Tom Johnson, NJ Spotlight

Public Service Electric & Gas is revamping plans to harden its power grid based on new engineering analyses of its utility substations, changes that may lower the cost of the multibillion dollar program to its customers.

In a more than 700-page filing to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the Newark utility is now recommending that all but two of the 28 substations targeted for upgrades be raised and rebuilt to prevent flooding of the facilities, which wiped out power in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy to hundreds of thousands of customers.

In February, the state’s largest electric and gas utility filed with the agency a $3.9 billion so-called Energy Strong program, a 10-year effort to protect its infrastructure from extreme weather and natural disasters. Its initial proposal before the BPUenvisions spending $2.6 billion over the next five years, much of which would go to work involving utility substations.

The proposal has come under fire from the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, consumer advocates, and others, who question whether utility customers can afford to pay for those investments, especially in a state with some of the highest electric prices in the nation.

In response, PSE&G has undertaken a more detailed engineering analysis of what needs to be done in a cost-effective manner to protect the substations, ranging from raising and rebuilding them, eliminating and moving them elsewhere, to building flood walls or berms around them.

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