NEW JERSEY – Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L), a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., has begun construction on a year-long project to upgrade overhead and install new underground electric service in portions of Sussex County.
The $5.1 million project is expected to be completed in November.
The work will take place along a power line running from a JCP&L substation in the Landing section of Roxbury Township and benefit 1,700 customers in Roxbury Township, Mount Arlington Borough in western Morris County and Hopatcong Borough in southern Sussex County.
“Our teams have worked diligently to plan projects like selective undergrounding and robust overhead upgrades that make a positive impact on service reliability for our customers. This work will help us better meet the current and future electric needs of these communities,” said Doug Mokoid, FirstEnergy’s President, New Jersey.
In addition to enhanced tree trimming along the power line, the electric grid upgrades include:
- Installing approximately 2,000 ft. of underground wires in Roxbury Township.
- Upgrading existing infrastructure with thicker, stronger poles and overhead wire that can safely carry more electricity and provide more resiliency in storms.
- Increasing the number of protective devices and reclosers that allow power to be rerouted to adjacent lines when an outage occurs, minimizing the number of impacted customers.
- Installing TripSaver devices, which sense temporary abnormalities along power lines, such as a tree branch bouncing off lines, and automatically reenergize the line after the condition has passed without having to send a crew to investigate.
The work is part of JCP&L’s New Jersey Reliability Improvement Project, a two-phase effort to enhance reliability for customers on high-priority lines selected based on historical outage data. The first phase includes a minimum of $95 million in upgrades over three years.
This project is part of Energize365, FirstEnergy’s grid evolution program focused on investing $26 billion between 2024 and 2028 across its six-state footprint to create a smarter, more secure grid that delivers the power customers depend on today while also meeting the challenges of tomorrow.
