MAYS LANDING To meet the evolving energy needs of its customers and advance a clean energy future, Atlantic City Electric has proposed a major project to modernize and enhance the energy grid across its service area in southern New Jersey.
It has filed with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities a plan to build a Smart Energy Network, including installing smart meters and upgrading the local energy grid with specialized networking equipment.
According to a release, the proposed upgrades will enhance the system's reliability and resiliency, improve customer service, and help customers save money and energy.
The Smart Energy Network is critical to connecting more customers to a variety of clean, reliable and affordable energy choices and helping New Jersey combat the effects of climate change, Region President Gary Stockbridge said. A modern energy grid, with the Smart Energy Network as its backbone, will pave the way for more solar energy installations, more robust energy efficiency programs, more charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and more resilient energy infrastructure to help restore service for our customers faster following increasingly common severe weather events.
The Smart Energy Network will allow Atlantic City Electric to safely restore power to customer homes and businesses quickly and efficiently. In the event of a power outage, smart meters will alert the company and help crews identify the cause and location of the outage. Using real-time data, Atlantic City Electric can better prioritize how to dispatch crews and plan restoration work, streamline restoration efforts and restore service faster after major storms.
During tropical storm Isaias, Atlantic City Electric had to rely on manually placing thousands of phone calls to confirm the status of a customer's service. This was often ineffective and, in many instances, led to dispatching restoration crews just to confirm service had already been restored.
Under the Smart Energy Network proposal, customers would benefit from several key upgrades, including:
Infrastructure investment strengthens New Jersey's economy, said Jerry Keenan, executive vice president of Alliance for Action. Atlantic City Electric's Smart Energy Network will help boost energy efficiency programs and ensure that we have the right technology to support more electric vehicle infrastructure and renewable energy, while also creating jobs in the clean energy sector and helping New Jersey's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The cost of implementing the Smart Energy Network will be spread across Atlantic City Electric's customer base over several years in order to achieve the reliability, resiliency and efficiency benefits while maintaining affordability.
Building the network is expected to cost approximately $220 million, or about $4.27 on the monthly bill of a typical residential customer. Costs will be offset by $415 million in savings through operational efficiencies.
If the BPU approves the plan, the company will begin building the Smart Energy Network in 2022. Meter exchanges would occur in four regional phases over the course of 21 months.
