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Energy Grid Upgrades from the Mainland to Barrier Islands to Benefit Thousands in Cape May County

Across South Jersey, we are seeing the impacts of more frequent and more severe storms driven by climate change. These storms and hurricanes are bringing stronger and more damaging winds and extreme flooding, and are having lasting impacts, particularly across the barrier islands. To prepare for the growing threats from extreme weather and powerful storms, we are performing upgrades to modernize our energy infrastructure across southern New Jersey.

As part of this effort, we recently completed the first phase of a project that will improve reliability for more than 7,000 customers in Middle Township, North Wildwood, and the surrounding area. The work, which was undertaken along Route 147 N. Wildwood Boulevard in Cape May County, included rebuilding and modernizing power lines that deliver power from the mainland to the coastal barrier islands. These upgrades will strengthen the energy infrastructure to withstand more severe storms and hurricanes.

Crews installed innovative technologies to improve system reliability, including specialized equipment that can automatically restore service more quickly or isolate damage, stronger utility poles that can withstand winds up to 120 miles per hour, new switches and other devices, and more than 35,000 feet of stronger, more resilient aerial cable.

This work is part of PowerAhead, Atlantic City Electric’s strategic grid resiliency initiative to modernize and enhance energy infrastructure in areas that have experienced outages during severe storms. Between 2017 and 2022, we will enhance the resiliency of the grid and perform necessary system upgrades through this targeted initiative across portions of our service area.

With the summer storm and hurricane seasons upon us, reliability enhancement projects like PowerAhead are critical to fortifying the energy grid and making the communities we serve more resilient against whatever Mother Nature may have in store for us.

For more information on PowerAhead and other grid resiliency and reliability enhancement projects, visit atlanticcityelectric.com/reliability.