Hardened PSEG electric system awaits storm season

Weather forecasts predicting an above-average number of storms this season may meet their match in an electric system undergoing one of its most intensive and costly hardening initiatives in decades, officials said Wednesday.

At a meeting of public officials, utilities and emergency personnel in Bethpage, PSEG Long Island vice president John O’Connell said that a $729 million federally funded electric-grid upgrade underway on Long Island, along with routine pre-storm work, have gone a long way toward fortifying the system.

The efforts also have brought 275 linemen to the region for three years to help with major outages.

“The system really is in the best shape it’s been in years,” said O’Connell, who oversees the transmission and distribution system for PSEG.

PSEG has nearly completed fortifying and raising 11 substations — critical centers where power is distributed to neighborhoods and businesses — that flooded during superstorm Sandy to “well above Sandy levels,” O’Connell said. Flooding in substations makes power restoration much more difficult.

PSEG already has upgraded 80 of a proposed 325 circuits, replacing utility poles and wires with stronger equipment in areas historically most impacted by storms, and installed other equipment to help isolate outages once they occur. The LIPA grid consists of 900 circuits in all.

PSEG also is completing a four-year cycle of tree trimming to minimize the impact of falling trees and branches on electric wires during storms or heavy winds.

The large increase in solar power in recent years and the effectiveness of efficiency and demand-reduction programs that reduce central air conditioner use, for instance, also have given PSEG more power for the heavy summer use period.

In a recent accounting of power availability for the region, PSEG said it expected to have 6,889 megawatts of power available this summer, when demand for electricity effectively doubles in high-use periods such as heat waves.

This year’s maximum capacity of 6,889 megawatts is a 2 percent increase from the 6,754 megawatts from all power sources that were available to meet last year’s demand. PSEG expects this year’s peak summertime demand to reach 5,456 megawatts, a decrease from last year’s 5,508 megawatts.

The difference between the expected peak load and the total capacity means that PSEG expects a 1,433-megawatt cushion above the summer peak. Last year the cushion was 701 megawatts.

PSEG’s calculation of capacity includes 146 megawatts of new capacity, primarily from solar sources added in the past year. It has the ability to import 935 megawatts from two upstate cables, 660 megawatts from the Neptune cable to New Jersey, and 530 megawatts from the New England grid through cables under the Long Island Sound.

National Grid, which operates the natural gas distribution system on Long Island, also is undergoing a major replacement of 3,000 miles of old steel pipe prone to leaking with new more resilient plastic pipe, said Bob DeMarinis, vice president of New York gas operations.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.