Atlantic City Electric has received approval of its Powering the Future program, a $93.1 million portfolio of projects the company will perform during the next four years to further modernize and enhance the local energy grid and advance new clean energy opportunities across South Jersey. The approval, provided by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, allows for the acceleration of 22 targeted projects that are essential to expanding the local energy grid’s ability to support the interconnection of more solar and other clean energy technologies, improve system reliability, and leverage more modern, smart technologies to help make the grid stronger and more resilient against increasingly impactful storms.
Powering the Future includes four specific categories of projects. These include:
- Solar/Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Enablement – Further expand the ability of the local energy grid to incorporate the increasing interconnection of clean energy technologies, including local solar and other distributed energy resources that will help achieve the State’s clean energy and climate goals.
- Targeted Reliability Improvements – Targeted work on the local energy grid focused on enhancing reliability where power outages are occurring more frequently or where system redundancy can help reduce the impacts of outages when they do occur.
- Smart Technology Upgrades – Further enhance the communications network and supporting devices that are used to reduce the frequency and duration of power outages.
- Substation Improvements –Upgrade various substations throughout the company’s service area to enhance customer reliability by modernizing infrastructure and other critical equipment, helping fortify these substations against more frequent and extreme weather events.
Powering the Future will build on Atlantic City Electric’s efforts over the past several years in making the local energy grid smarter, stronger, and cleaner. This work is having a significant and noticeable impact on the reliability of the service provided to local customers and communities. Just last year, Atlantic City Electric customers experienced the most reliable service ever, with the lowest frequency of electric outages in the company’s history. Ongoing investments in the local energy grid have reduced the frequency of electric outages by more than 75 percent since 2012 for Atlantic City Electric customers, despite the increasing frequency and severity of storms.
Atlantic City Electric will begin executing Powering the Future in July 2023. To recover costs for Powering the Future, gradual rate changes will occur over four years between 2023 and 2027. The total monthly bill for a typical residential customer using 680 kilowatt hours will increase by approximately $1.22 or 0.84 percent over the four-year period.
Atlantic City Electric customers can view the company’s solar hosting capacity map for updates on available solar opportunities in their area, as well as the digital solar toolkit and ConnectTheGrid application portal for helpful information to make the switch to solar.
