January 23, 2020

To help ensure continued  service reliability for two million Pennsylvania customers, Met-Ed, Penelec, Penn Power and West Penn Power have received approval from the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) for our second Long Term Infrastructure Improvement Plan (LTIIP II).

The newly approved LTIIP II is the second phase of accelerated distribution improvement projects in Pennsylvania. The new plan includes an additional $572 million in capital investments to be made over the next five years. From 2016-2019, during the first LTIIP, FirstEnergy invested nearly $360 million in infrastructure.

“These investments build on earlier improvement plans and include rebuilding critical infrastructure such as overhead circuits, as well as replacing key equipment in our substations,” said Scott Wyman, president, Pennsylvania Operations.  “The improvement plan for each utility is designed to complement the work we already perform on our distribution network, year-in and year-out, to reduce the number and duration of outages experienced by our customers.”

Projects will include replacing older poles, underground and overhead lines and fuses; installing new substation equipment, network vaults and manhole covers; and reconfiguring circuits.

Approximately $123 million of the work is expected to be completed in 2020 across FirstEnergy’s Pennsylvania service areas, with the remainder spent over the next four years.

Planned 2020-2024 LTIIP II investments for each operating company are:

• Met-Ed – $153 million
• Penelec – approximately $200 million
• Penn Power – $72 million
• West Penn Power – approximately $147 million

Costs associated with these service reliability investments are recovered through Distribution System Improvement Charges (DSIC)s on monthly electric bills. LTIIPs and the DSIC were authorized by the Pennsylvania legislature in 2012 to encourage electric, natural gas, water and sewer utilities to accelerate infrastructure improvement and help create economic benefits.

“We anticipate filing additional LTIIPs in coming years,” Wyman said. “FirstEnergy is committed to a sound, cost-effective approach that will result in consistent reliability performance.”

Check the Jan. 23 news release for more details.