CL&P Going After Trees and Infrastructure in Five-Year Plan

Vernon residents know all too well what fickle power infrastructure cans do. Just ask those without power for a week or two after hurricane/tropical storm Irene and the October snowstorm.

Electrical circuits with a history of poor performance would be targeted for upgrade according to Connecticut Light & Power's proposed system resiliency plan. 

The five-year, $300 million "infrastructure hardening" plan was filed this week  with the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority.  CL&P committed to file the plan with regulators as part of the recent merger with NSTAR, according to a news release.

“This infrastructure hardening plan is a key part of our efforts to improve CL&P’s emergency preparedness and response,” said CL&P Senior Vice President of Emergency Preparedness  Bill Quinlan. “We are confident that this investment will benefit our customers by improving the day-to-day reliability of our system and making it less vulnerable to outages due to extreme weather.” 

CL&P's proposal consists of three parts:

• Tree trimming.
• Electrical hardening (making the wires less vulnerable to interruption) and structural hardening (strengthening of poles, cross-arms and related equipment). 

"These proposed improvements are based on what we presented to the Governor's Two-Storm Panel," said Dana Louth, CL&P's vice president of infrastructure hardening. "Since then, we have been refining the scope of the plan and, if approved, work will begin in 2013."

More than half of the proposed expenditures would go towards tree trimming, because as trees remain "the No. 1 cause of outages," Louth said. Earlier this year, CL&P announced a significant enhancement to its tree trimming program, with the company spending $53.5 million in 2012, approximately doubling its 2011 expenditures.

A decision by PURA on CL&P’s system resiliency plan is anticipated later this year, Louth said.