Con Edison invests to prevent blackouts

New York City energy supplier Consolidated Edison of New York (NYSE: ED) is in the midst of an ambitious $1.4 billion investment program to ensure uninterrupted electricity delivery even during summer peak demand months. Con Edison is investing in upgrades in both its infrastructure delivery system and its emergency response system. On Long Island alone, Con Edison has spent $90 million to upgrade facilities in order to prevent another blackout like the one that hits Queens during summer 2006. Con Edison has inspected 6,000 electric structures; installed 25 miles of secondary underground cable; installed 101 network transformers; and added microprocessor relays to detect equipment malfunctions promptly.

Queens was not the only borough to receive attention. Con Edison spent almost $500 million on construction of three substations in the Bronx and Manhattan; allocated $739 million for distribution system upgrades and $137 million for transmission upgrades. Con Edison will spend $7.5 billion over the next five years to upgrade its transmission and distribution system, as well as to add capacity. Electricity demand in its service area has grown annually by close to 200 megawatts, the equivalent of adding an additional 200,000 homes every year to the grid. For summer 2007, Con Edison has projected a peak load of 13,575 megawatts, of which 80% is reserved for New York City use.

In case all these upgrades nonetheless fail, Con Edison has also beefed up its emergency response system, including an enhanced system for tracing outages; the installation of 500,000 smart meters that can automatically send outage messages; new procedures for dispatching repair crews; and 250 new telephone lines to tell them where they need to go.