PPL steadily increases investment in reliability

PPL Electric Utilities plans to invest $664 million in capital improvements to its electric delivery system in 2012.  In 2011, PPL Electric Utilities invested $458 million. The company invested $422 million in 2010 and $290 million in 2009.

As part of the company's efforts to strengthen reliability and address aging infrastructure, more than 100 local projects will be funded to build new substations, upgrade existing facilities, replace older transmission lines and poles, improve distribution circuits and upgrade technology for improved operations.

The investments were identified through a 2008-2009 study that evaluated all of the power lines, substations and other key components based on age, condition and performance. In particular, the company will replace 1,000 transmission line poles, 81 substation circuit breakers and substation transformers that are critical to system reliability, as well as build new transmission lines and rebuild existing ones.

Further, $17 million in technology investments will upgrade the company's outage and workforce management systems, as well as expand use of advanced meters and mobile computers in the field.

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