Duquesne Light plans $66M in upgrades to transmission lines

Utility aims to ‘create the grid of the future’

With an aging power network serving more and more people, Duquesne Light Co. has announced about $66 million worth of major projects to upgrade transmission lines.

Over the next few years, the Downtown-based electric utility plans to improve its network with three investments: a 5-mile transmission line from Penn Hills to Plum; new wires on a 7-mile existing line in the South Hills; and new lines and poles along a 15mile existing line through Crescent, Moon and Robinson.

The transmission upgrades are part of the utility’s long-term $2.9 billion spending plan from 2011 to 2021.

In a statement, Rich Riazzi, company president and chief executive officer, said the utility aims to “create the grid of the future.”

That means “investing significant resources to ensure that our region’s infrastructure — the wires, transformers, substations, poles and other equipment that make up the transmission and distribution system — meets our customers’ current and future electrical demands.”

Jason Harchick, senior manager for system planning and protection at Duquesne Light, said the utility constantly monitors computer models that analyze power demand across its network serving 500,000 homes and businesses in Allegheny and Beaver counties.

By forecasting demand five to 10 years in the future, planners can identify areas where investment is needed.

For all three projects, “the primary driver was load growth in the area,” Mr. Harchick said.

The utility will use new design concepts like monopoles, which resemble radio towers and have a significantly smaller footprint than a traditional electric transmission tower.

While the older lattice transmission towers are spread out with four legs and hold the power lines in widely outstretched arms, the monopoles will be placed in concrete foundations and hold the power lines at the very center of the utility’s 125-foot-wide right-ofway path.

The new line, called the Universal-Plum Reliability Project, is planned to span roughly 5 miles and zigzag northeast from a substation in Penn Hills to a substation in Plum, dipping briefly into Monroeville. Construction, projected to cost $15 million, is expected to begin January 2018 and wrap up by the end of that year.

The utility reached out to customers along the proposed path of the new transmission line near the end of last year and held open house events to hear concerns, spokeswoman Ashlee Yingling said.

That project will require about 40 steel monopoles, which range in height from 105 feet to 150 feet.

“We do our best to be as least impactful as possible,” Mr. Harchick said. “We do consider multiple routes, and we work with the customer to minimize the impact.”

In the South Hills project, the utility will spend $11 million to install wires along an existing line that will permit increased flow of power from Scott to Bethel Park.

The largest project of the group is a $40 million upgrade from its Brunot Island substation to Crescent — a 15-mile journey that will require the replacement of transmission towers with 110 monopoles. That project is scheduled to run from February 2019 through the end of 2021.