The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) recently approved the second phase of the Long Term Infrastructure Improvement Plans (LTIIP II) proposed by FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiaries Metropolitan Edison, Pennsylvania Electric Company, Pennsylvania Power and West Penn Power.
The plans include an additional $572 million in capital investments to be made over the next five years across FirstEnergy’s utilities in Pennsylvania.
The first phase included approximately $360 million in investments made from 2016 to 2019.
“The improvement plan for each utility is designed to complement the work we already perform on our distribution network, year-in and year-out, to reduce the number and duration of outages experienced by our customers,” Scott R. Wyman, president of FirstEnergy’s Pennsylvania Operations, said. “These investments build on earlier improvement plans and include rebuilding critical infrastructure such as overhead circuits, as well as replacing key equipment in our substations.”
The projects in LTIIP II include the replacement of older poles, underground and overhead lines and fuses; the installation of new substation equipment, network vaults and manhole covers; and the reconfiguration of circuits.
The utilities will also submit separate plans to address further replacements and reinforcements of wooden distribution poles.