“Providing reliable electric service to approximately 1.2 million customers is a long-term commitment, and our personnel work year-round to ensure the grid is ready for summer’s extreme weather conditions. The improvements we have made over the past decade continue to help us deliver consistent, resilient power to our customers, today and in the future.” 

- Michael Sullivan, Vice President of Electric Operations, PSEG Long Island.

Electric Infrastructure Improvements
Across Long Island and the Rockaways, PSEG Long Island has prepared the electric infrastructure by focusing on substation, and transmission and distribution improvements, as well as by performing circuit and equipment inspections using helicopters and infrared technology.  

PSEG Long Island’s infrastructure improvements for summer 2024 include:

• Installing a new 33 kV underground transmission circuit in the Rockaways to provide additional capacity to accommodate load growth on the Rockaway Beach Peninsula 
• Upgrading 69 kV substation facilities to accommodate South Fork Wind offshore wind renewable generation interconnecting in East Hampton
• Completing 33 kV substation conversions at Buell, Amagansett, Navy Road, Culloden Point and Hero substations to improve reliability and provide additional capacity during peak demand in the East End
• Reconfiguring transmission circuits in the Hewlett area to enhance the reliability of the transmission system
• Installing new or upgraded distribution transformers in Brooklyn Avenue and Bridgehampton substations to provide additional capacity during peak demand
• Replacing switchgears at East Garden City, Elwood, and West Hempstead substations
• Installing or upgrading five new distribution feeder lines in Park Place, Elwood, Brooklyn Avenue and Bridgehampton areas to accommodate load growth

Storm Hardening Programs
Since the implementation of the FEMA-funded storm-hardening program funded in 2014, PSEG Long Island has completed storm hardening and reliability work on more than 1,000 miles of distribution mainline circuits. 

PSEG Long Island is proud to continue its storm hardening work with Power On, an initiative started in the spring of 2020 that will continue to improve reliability by strengthening distribution lines, targeting the most vulnerable circuits across Long Island and the Rockaways. Since the launch, an additional more than 352 miles of distribution mainline circuits have been storm hardened with stronger poles, thicker wire and other modern equipment. 

These investments have strengthened the system so that fewer customers experience outages and, when they do occur, the duration is shorter, especially during extreme weather. Excluding catastrophic storms, the sections of circuits that PSEG Long Island has storm-hardened have seen a 72% reduction in damage leading to outages from 2016 through 2023, compared with the rest of the distribution system.

To further protect against storm damage to the energy grid, arborists from PSEG Long Island’s Tree Trimming program work throughout the year to identify and trim tree limbs in rights of way and along easements that could potentially cause outages during or after a storm. Since 2014, PSEG Long Island removed more than 118,000 hazardous trees and/or large limbs along the distribution and transmission system and trimmed more than 26,400 miles of distribution and transmission line clearance in accordance with the industry best practice clearance standard. This standard preserves the health of the tree and directs future growth away from power lines. In addition, PSEG Long Island’s vine mitigation program identified, cut and treated more than 21,000 vine locations across Long Island and the Rockaways. 

PSEG Long Island also prepares its dedicated workforce for summer by conducting annual hurricane and tropical storm drills and employee training; by developing emergency summer operating plans; and by performing summer-peak reliability analyses to ensure there is sufficient capacity to meet electric demand on high-heat days.

Customers have noticed PSEG Long Island’s reliability investments. The company’s overall 2023 J.D. Power residential customer satisfaction survey results increased by 12 points, moving PSEG Long Island into the second quartile among large utilities in the East. This improvement was driven primarily by significant improvements in satisfaction around the survey’s categories of Power Quality & Reliability and Corporate Citizenship.  

PSEG Long Island’s climate change studies to shape proactive measures in years ahead
PSEG Long Island is also pleased to announce that the findings of its recent Climate Change Vulnerability Study are shaping an in-depth Climate Change Resilience Plan to be published by PSEG Long Island and LIPA later this year.

Among its many findings, the study considers risks associated with increases in average daily temperatures and more frequent, longer heat waves as the century progresses. It also considers greater asset exposure to coastal flooding due to rising sea levels, as well as risks associated with a modest increase in the maximum sustained wind speeds of tropical cyclones. It sets the stage for proactive initiatives to address them in the Climate Change Resilience Plan. To view the full study, visit psegliny.com/inthecommunity/currentinitiatives/CCVS.

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PSEG Long Island
PSEG Long Island operates the Long Island Power Authority’s transmission and distribution system under a long-term contract.  PSEG Long Island is a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PSEG) (NYSE:PEG), a publicly traded diversified energy company.