Akron, OH based FirstEnergy Corporation (FE) through three of its subsidiaries has collectively invested approximately $1,078 million in 2014 to enhance the overall efficiency and reliability of its electric system.
While FirstEnergy’s Toledo Edison spent $152 million in infrastructure upgrade programs, Ohio Edison and The Illuminating Company incurred $690 million and $263 million respectively for reliability programs in their service areas.
Of the total amount disbursed for the strengthening of infrastructure, a total of $858 million was spent on transmission projects owned by FirstEnergy’s American Transmission Systems, Inc.
Infrastructure upgrades include expansion of transmission lines, installation of new transmission substations, replacement of distribution poles and circuits, installation of remote-control equipment and voltage regulating equipment to stabilize voltage levels and finally trimming trees along power lines for proper clearance.
Apart from upgrading its electric systems, FirstEnergy has developed Power Center outage maps, whereby customers can check the progress of service restoration in case of a power outage.
Another FirstEnergy subsidiary, Jersey Central Power & Light, completed around 160 projects in 2014 to provide enhanced service reliability to 1.1 million customers in northern and central New Jersey. These projects, valued at $250 million, will help the company keep its systems up-to-date for handling additional load growth in the future (read: FirstEnergy Stepped Up Service Reliability Projects in 2014).
FirstEnergy will continue to allocate capital expenditure for enhancing service reliability in 2015. The utility has new projects for substations, transmission lines and circuit upgrades lined up for the current year. The company intends to shell out $4.2 billion from 2014 through 2017 to meet rising electric load growth of 1,100 MW in the next five years.
Zacks Rank
FirstEnergy currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked stocks in the electric utility space include Huaneng Power International, Inc. (HNP) and Northeast Utilities (NU), sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and CMS Energy Corp. (CMS) carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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