Dive Summary:

• PPL Electric Utilities will bring automated grid technology to Monroe County, Pennsylvania next year to improve the reliability of electric service to 70,000 customers.
• The project has cost the utility $10 million and will open the way for the installation of 230 automated devices on 52 distribution circuits; 16 area electric substations will also be upgraded.
• The new system will sense where a problem occurs on the line and automatically reroute power from other lines in a matter of moments so the majority of customers only experience a minor interruption.

From the article:

“We targeted Monroe County for this project because we believe it’s an area where automation would have the most benefits, in terms of improving reliability for our customers,” said Paul Canevari, PPL’s regional community relations director for the Pocono region. “Our goal is to reduce the number of outages and outage length. With improved reliability, we hope to better satisfy our customers in the area.”

Historically, customers in the Pocono region have experienced more outages of longer duration than the average PPL customer. This is partly due to the wooded and mountainous terrain in the region, Canevari said. ...