Cutting trees is the best way to cut power outages, PPL Electric Utilities officials say.
The company has gotten aggressive at cutting trees, while making system improvements in Schuylkill and Carbon counties and using the latest technology throughout its system.
The efforts are designed to make electricity more reliable, said Gregory N. Dudkin, president of PPL Electric Utilities. Dudkin and Christina Sepich, PPL's regional director of operations; Paul G. Wirth, director of utility communications, and Martha Herron, PPL's regional affairs director, met Thursday with the editorial board of the Standard-Speaker and Republican-Herald.
"Electric reliability has gotten a lot of notice over the past couple years, locally and nationally, because we had some major storms that impacted a lot of people's lives," Dudkin said. "We take the responsibility very seriously to improve the reliability of service. The things that we're doing are starting to take hold, and we're starting to see some of the benefits."
During 2013, the number of power outages was down by 9 percent compared to the average of the previous three years, the company said. The average duration of power outages was down 11 percent by the same comparison.
One of the reasons is trimming trees, Dudkin said.
"Tree trimming is a big area we've been working very hard at," he said. "A lot of people don't realize, when we get a storm, it's the trees that cause the interruption. Lightning, wind storms, ice storms, all those impact trees. The tree branches or the trees themselves come over.
"During (Hurricane) Sandy, the soil was so moist, and with the wind, whole trees would come down, and take down poles and wires," he said. "We can make a significant improvement in our performance" by trimming trees.
Wirth said there will be fewer power outages every storm from now on because there are fewer trees near the utility's wires.
Improvements
Dudkin said when PPL Electric Utilities analyzed the condition of its system a few years ago, company officials realized a lot of work had to be done.
"A lot of our plant was built in the '50 and '60s, when a lot of our service territory was growing. We have a transmission line built in the 1920s we are rebuilding," he said. "When we take a look at the condition, we realized we had to put together a multi-year plan to address the aging infrastructure."
That work started in 2010 and will go on for a half-dozen years.
"We're investing significant sums of money to upgrade and replace aging infrastructure," Dudkin said. "We are doing a lot of investment in our transmission and distribution systems to make them more robust and resilient."
PPL Electric Utilities has plans to do five projects this year in Schuylkill and Carbon counties to improve customer reliability.
The largest of the projects is to upgrade two aging circuits serving Schuylkill County, including replacing aging insulators, cross arms and other equipment. The project will improve service reliability and help limit the duration of any power outages for more than 4,000 customers in Cass, Frailey, Hegins and Reilly townships and Tremont.
Sepich said the project is to replace one of the oldest lines in the PPL system.
"That's actually one of the few lines we have left in the PPL utility system that operates 23 KV," Sepich said. "As we modernized in the late '70s and early '80s, we went to 12 KV versus 23 KV and 4 KV, which were in the past. That is one of our oldest."
The four other projects are:
- Upgrading power lines between the Weissport and Ashfield substations for improved reliability for about 3,200 Carbon County customers.
- Upgrading a power line between Meadow Drive and Deibert's Valley Road in South Manheim Township, Schuylkill County, improving electric service for about 235 customers.
- Transferring 1,400 customers in Kidder and Tobyhanna townships in Carbon County from the company's Lake Harmony substation to the Jack Frost substation to improve their service reliability.
- Installing 2.5 miles of new line along Route 209 to help meet growing demand for electricity and to improve reliability for about 1,700 customers in the Nesquehoning and Summit Hill area in Carbon County.
Smart grid
The third prong in PPL's strategy to improve electric service is to use the latest technology.
Dudkin said PPL Electric Utilities will invest $20 million to $25 million a year for the next half-dozen years in smart grid technology.
"We have switches on top of poles that will be able to sense there is a problem," Dudkin said, explaining what smart grid technology does. "That sensor, right now, goes back to an operator who would be able to open and close switches and restore power very quickly. Before, we would have to send out a truck to see what the problem is and have the (lineman on the) truck go open the switch, and that could take a couple of hours."
Wirth said the reason the switches are important is that if a customer is out of power, PPL can throw a switch here and there and restore service from somewhere else in the system before its crews repair the damage.
"What's coming down the pike, we'll have smart switches, and we are installing software to make those decisions to open and close switches to restore power automatically. That's coming very soon," Wirth said. "We had a pilot program in the Harrisburg area a few years ago, and we saw a 50 percent improvement."
Aside from cutting trees, making physical improvements to the system and incorporating the latest technology, PPL Electric Utilities also is investing in:
- Stronger poles. The company is installing bigger, taller poles with thicker wires to help prevent storm damage.
- Lightning protection. This work makes it less likely that lightning strikes on lines will cause power outages.
- Animal guards. These devices prevent squirrels and other animals from getting into equipment and causing outages.