By: Daily Record |
A $25 million proposal to build new power lines from Montville to Whippany will be discussed at two open houses this week.
“This is a brand new high voltage line,” said Ron Morano, a spokesman for Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L). “It’s a new seven mile line we are going to build in Morris County.
JCP&L will provide additional information about the project at the Holiday Inn, 707 Route 46 East, Parsippany, on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon.
The proposed route for the project involves constructing a new, seven-mile 230 kilovolt transmission line in Morris County through parts of East Hanover, Parsippany and Montville to enhance service reliability, add redundancy to JCP&L’s system and meet the growing demand for electricity in the region.
“There is an existing route there,” Morano said. “We will parallel that route for the majority of it but there are some portions of it we will have to get some additional right of way.”
The lines will run between the utility’s Whippany substation to its Montville substation. The project will use monopole construction and the towers will be about 100 feet high, according to Morano, who said homeowners along the route have been notified about the utility’s construction plans.
In comparison, PSE&G’s Susquehanna-Roseland transmission lines, which are also going through Morris County, are an average of 180 feet tall and are bipolar towers.
JCP&L expects to file a petition for the project with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities in the first quarter of 2014.
PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of electricity and oversees transmission system reliability in all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia, has determined that the project should be built and has requested that the project be in service by June 2017.
PJM’s assessment is based on existing and projected system conditions and the potential for future demand on the system.
The project is part of JCP&L’s Local Infrastructure and Transmission Enhancement (LITE) Program, a $200 million, multi-year transmission system initiative that will improve service reliability for JCP&L customers in northern and central New Jersey.
In the past decade, the demand for electricity in New Jersey has grown about three times faster than the population as homeowners use electricity to power everything from big-screen televisions to computer devices to the latest kitchen appliances.
