PSEG Long Island preps for next big storm by hardening electric grid

PSEG Long Island, helped by lessons learned from LIPA after superstorm Sandy, along with $729 million in federal funding to harden the local electric grid, is nearly finished with a multiyear plan to prepare all portions of Long Island for the next big storm.

Funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency has allowed the utility to harden more than 708 miles of electric circuits throughout the region.

Since Sandy in October 2012, older utility poles have been replaced with thicker ones capable of withstanding winds of up to 135 miles per hour, a mark of a category 4 hurricane, said John O’Connell, vice president of transmission and distribution for PSEG. The system previously could have withstood between a category 1 and 2 hurricane, he said.

The FEMA money ultimately also will fund replacement of about 30,000 of PSEG Long Island's 350,000 utility poles.

Replacing so many poles is “a really big improvement for storm hardening,” said O’Connell. He noted that having to replace them during or after a power restoration job can complicate and lengthen work time.

The work since Sandy also has involved replacing old transmission wires with stronger, better-insulated lines. Devices called sectionalizers now allow the utility to remotely monitor potential outages, and to automate and isolate them when they occur.

Bottom line: Fewer customers are impacted when a localized outage hits.

But PSEG's efforts haven't been without controversy, or critics.

The company has been sued by residents' groups and towns for installation of larger poles in neighborhoods in East Hampton and Eastport, where tall steel poles in concrete foundations were erected with little public notice.

Roy Reynolds, president of the East Moriches Property Owners Association, a civic group, at a recent LIPA trustee meeting accused PSEG of "manipulation" and "fraud" in its environmental filings for the Eastport project.  

Brookhaven Town sued unsuccessfully over that project, and awaits a decision on appeal. PSEG declined to comment on the pending litigation. 

Long Island lawmakers including Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) and Assemb. Fred Thiele (I-Sag Harbor), have been harshly critical of the company's hardening project on the East End, including the public notification aspect, and have called on PSEG to make good on a vow to remove steel poles in the Eastport business district. 

Former Long Island Lighting Co. executive Matthew Cordaro said for all the preparation PSEG or any utility may do, there is always the chance that a particularly bad storm will do massive damage.

“I think they will be better, but they will still have trouble,” said Cordaro, a LIPA trustee speaking for himself. “These storms are almost impossible to keep up with. They do so much damage it’s hard to say. You can never be foolproof in preparing your systems. The only way is to have the whole system underground.”

PSEG plans to harden a total of 1,025 miles of power-line circuits by the first quarter of 2020, O’Connell said. About 70 percent of the work is finished.

It had been scheduled to be finished by summer of 2019, but the temporary loss of crews and other factors pushed it back, O'Connell said. PSEG brought in 200 to 300 outside crews for the storm work, but some were called by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to work on the Puerto Rico power restoration for months. 

Meanwhile, PSEG has completed a plan to physically raise facilities known as substations across Long Island. Substations are crucial centers for distributing power from power plants to local users across the system.

The work involved raising the substations to protect against flooding of up to 12 feet high. A dozen substations were swamped and damaged during Sandy, limiting the utility’s ability to maintain power in low-lying areas around Long Beach and the Rockaways. All have been fixed and raised, O’Connell said.  

Even as it works to harden the system, PSEG also is working to significantly improve storm response systems and protocols to quicken restoration times.

The company recently introduced a mobile phone app that will allow emergency repair crews who come to Long Island to quickly access tools and information on their mobile phones once they arrive. It’s a big change from the response to Sandy, when thousands of outside crews worked with paper maps and antiquated systems for assigning and reporting on work.

The new app will allow crews to take and send photos of damaged circuits, report when they have arrived and finished a job and get directions to each new job location.

“They can be safer and more productive,” O’Connell said. When workers depart, their access to the system is terminated.

PSEG damage surveyors also will have the app.

The app will work with an automated outage management system that PSEG installed shortly after taking over management of the Long Island electric grid in 2014. The management system is designed to give customers better information about outage causes, restoration times, crew arrivals and completions.

PSEG also has worked to beef up communications systems since taking over the grid, addressing a major complaint following Sandy.

There are new protocols and phone contacts for informing and working with local governments and officials.

Customers now receive advance notification of threatening storms via phone, email or text, and can use those services or the company’s website to notify the utility of an outage. Customers also can use social media platforms such as Facebook to report outages, said utility spokeswoman Elizabeth Flagler.

The utility last year completed the first four-year cycle of trimming trees around electric wires across Long Island, and began the process anew this year.

PSEG is trimming trees a few feet more around the wires — 12 feet above them, 10 feet below and eight feet on either side — than LIPA had done throughout its history, reducing the likelihood of branches damaging wires and causing outages, O’Connell said.

Finally, PSEG has improved the system for calling in outside crews when storms that could cause outages are brewing. O’Connell said PSEG monitors the weather and works to mobilize outside crews earlier than LIPA had done in the face of large storms.

The result: “Quicker response times and shorter overall outage periods,” O’Connell said. “We err on the side of being ready and mobilizing.”

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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