More than a year into the project, LG&E’s and KU’s investments in distribution automation have already helped prevent more than 16,000 electric service interruptions for customers — saving more than 6.2 million minutes when customers would have previously lost power.
The goal of the company’s $112 million Distribution Automation Project is to install more than 1,400 reclosers on electric distribution circuits across the LG&E and KU service territories. These small circuit breakers, strategically placed, can be used to isolate outages to as few customers as possible when problems occur, quickly restoring power to others to prevent sustained outages.
The company began installing electronic reclosers in July 2017. Since then, crews have installed about 400 of the devices on LG&E and KU electric distribution circuits serving more than 180,000 customers.
As the project continues, the company will implement and integrate advanced management systems that can “talk to” or remotely monitor and control the electronic reclosers.
This ability to centralize and automate the monitoring and remote operations of the reclosers by the Distribution Control Center — coupled with the expertise of crews working in the field and making repairs — means outages will occur less frequently, and when they do occur, power will be restored more quickly than before.
Learn more about how PPL is moving energy forward at www.pplsustainability.com
