Peermont Project Resumes; Focus Is Substation to Homes

STONE HARBOR – The first phase of Atlantic City Electric’s (ACE) Peermont Project brought mammoth steel poles to the borough and touched off a seismic reaction that brought changes to the governing body and helped topple a mayor who had served for over 20 years. 
No one expects Peermont phase two to have anything like that impact.
Phase one of ACE’s plan was presented as the utility’s attempt to increase the resiliency of its infrastructure on Seven Mile Island and to add the capacity the utility said is needed to cope with the demands of rapid growth of high energy-use homes.
The plan placed a new substation on the island, developed redundant transmission feeds, greatly increased the amount of energy transmitted to the island and added to the resiliency of that infrastructure in the face of stronger and more frequent storms.
The futuristic steel poles, much higher than any existing wooden poles were said to be necessary to carry the increased load required to feed the island’s hunger for electricity.
A push to have the utility move the transmission system underground was rejected as too costly to ACE’s overall customer base.
That entire phase of the Peermont Project was dedicated to transmission of power to the island and its new substation.
Now, the utility is turning its attention to the distribution system which carries power from the substation to individual homes.
The goals are to increase redundancy and to have a distribution system capable of segmenting the user base so as to limit outages when they occur to smaller clusters of homes.
Multiple feeds will allow redundant service preventing outages and segmentation will limit the expanse of what outages do occur.
In order to accomplish that, the utility’s early plans called for a distribution system feeder that would travel First Avenue along the beach blocks.
The unexpectedly fierce reaction to phase one, an alert and quick reacting set of borough officials and the result of a meeting with residents at the Harbor Theater changed all that.
Gone was the proposed route along First Avenue. In its place, the utility will use the existing steel poles on Second Avenue. That is a more expensive option for ACE, but it has benefits for homeowners that go beyond avoiding a distribution system marching down First Avenue.
Since the utility began the Peermont project, blocks of homeowners have been uniting to cover the cost of moving the distribution system to their individual homes underground. 
Laying conduit for utility infrastructure has become a regular part of the borough’s street program. The fact that the utility was forced to relocate its distribution system away from First Avenue will make it easier for homeowners in that area to continue the process of burying electrical lines. The move does not decrease the cost of that effort, but the original plans to use First Avenue would surely have increased the cost.
There is a catch in phase two. The steel poles will not handle all that needs to happen to implement the new distribution infrastructure.
The plan requires two new wooden poles, each larger than normal at 50 feet, will be placed along the route.
Both will go on Second Avenue, one near the intersection with 90th Street and the other near the intersection with 85th Street. 
No other new poles will be introduced but some existing wooden poles will be replaced with new wooden poles of the same size.
The borough has maps that show where the poles will be placed. It is planning to reach out to homeowners in the proximity of each pole in addition to whatever notification is done by the utility.
The hope is that the poles and their associated equipment will not have too detrimental an impact on line-of-sight views of the water.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.