JEA is Prepared for Hurricane Season 2014

2014-06-01

Jacksonville, FL - Hurricane season starts June 1. JEA prepares for hurricane season throughout the year. JEA has made substantial investments in our electric system to maintain service in the event of a major storm.

Here are some of the important measures JEA is taking to help you keep power.

• Over the last several years JEA has invested more than $1.8 million annually on upgrading existing pole hardware on our main lines to our new fiberglass standard. This new equipment standard has been shown to reduce the number of outages by more than 65 percent.
• JEA is investing $1million this year rebuilding and upgrading some of our oldest electric substations to provide improved reliability to our customers. The new equipment maximizes our ability to serve our customers in all types of weather.
• Since 2010, JEA has invested more than $1.7 million to install new technology that gives JEA the ability to monitor and record data to ensure we provide the maximum reliability to our customers.
• JEA electric operations has invested more than $5 million in the last several years deploying three phase reclosers across our territory. These devices allow JEA to isolate electrical faults, such as a tree falling onto our lines, and allows us to restore power remotely to affected customers.
• Each year, JEA inspects and tests a portion of our wooden poles to ensure they can withstand the stresses applied to them as storms roll through town. Over the last several years, JEA has invested more than $5 million annually replacing the poles that did not meet these requirements.
• Before JEA power can enter your home or business, it has to be delivered from our generating facilities to your area of town through transmission lines. The reliability of JEA’s transmission system is very important. JEA has invested more than $38 million in the last five years enhancing the reliability of our transmission system to ensure it stays in service during storms.
• Each year JEA invests $600,000 on specific vegetation management work for our customers who have experienced a high number of outages. The project targets tree limbs that grow over the top of our main primary voltage power lines. When these limbs break and fall, such as during a storm, they can break the wire causing an extended outage to our customers. The targeted work alone has been shown to reduce the number of outages affecting our customers by about 30 percent.
• JEA now has a new electric outage reporting tool that can track how many outages every customer in our system has experienced in the last 12 months. JEA is investing more than $1.2 million this year to improve the electric reliability for those specific customers that have had a high number of outages in the last year. This work has been shown to reduce outages by more than 80 percent.

JEA is the seventh-largest community-owned electric utility in the United States and one of the largest water and sewer utilities in the nation providing electric, water and sewer service to residents and businesses in northeast Florida. JEA maintains more than 729 miles of transmission lines and 6,547 miles of distribution lines in its electric system. On the water and sewer side, JEA has 4,208 miles of water lines and 3,708 miles of collection lines.

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