This year marks the 10-Year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, a superstorm that had devastating and lasting impacts across South Jersey. The magnitude of Superstorm sandy was unprecedented, causing severe flooding, hurricane force winds and storm surge that practically changed the landscape of the Jersey shore, causing nearly 200,000 of our customers to lose power. Atlantic City Electric has since made significant investments and upgrades to the local energy grid, making it stronger, smarter, and cleaner and to reduce the impacts of more frequent and severe weather.
“Over the past 10 years, we have focused on making the local grid more reliable and more resilient to more frequent and severe storms. As a result of those efforts the reliability for our customers have achieved record levels, reducing the level of outages by 60%,” said Ryan Lewis, Director of Electric Operations at Atlantic City Electric, speaking at the Press of AC’s Hurricane Sandy: 10 Years Later live panel event.
Several critical projects have been completed that enhance service to customers and improve system resiliency, while numerous other reliability improvement projects are underway, reaffirming our commitment to reduce the impact of severe storms.
PowerAhead Grid Resiliency Program – A grid resiliency initiative that oversaw installing hundreds of devices that enable remote power restoration and that can automatically restore power to homes and businesses.
Atlantic City/Brigantine Community Reliability Project – Modernized an existing substation and rebuilt two critical transmission lines between Atlantic City and Brigantine to strengthen the local energy infrastructure against more extreme weather and to reduce outages, improving reliability for local customers.
Atlantic to Ocean Counties Reliability Project – Rebuilt 15 miles of transmission line running through Port Republic, Bass River Township and Little Egg Harbor Township to improve reliability and reduce outages for thousands of customers in these areas.
Just as we prepare for a severe weather events such as Superstorm Sandy, we encourage our customers and communities to be ready for storms and other emergencies and to stay safe. Visit atlanticcityelectric.com/StormPrep for tips on how to be prepared for a storm.