NYSEG Upgrades to Increase Reliability for Thousands of Ithaca and Lansing Customers

Newly installed smart circuit devices will help provide quicker restoration times for customers  

BINGHAMTON, NY — December 1, 2021 —  New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) announced today it has completed upgrades to 12 circuits fed from its Cayuga Heights and Fourth Street substations in Ithaca and South Lansing substation in Lansing as part of the company’s commitment to provide safe and reliable service to all customers. The completed project will create a more reliable and resilient energy grid for more than 9,100 customers in the city of Ithaca and town of Lansing.

“We are pleased to hear about NYSEG’s upgrades and improvements to an electric infrastructure that will promise a more reliable energy service on behalf of nearly 10,000 local customers,” said Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick. “Interruptions to electric services is something that all of us have experienced and to know that safeguards are being put in place which look to lessen those occurrences provides yet another example of the power of collaboration between the City of Ithaca and NYSEG. We look forward to further improvements and continued partnerships!”

The project installed cutting-edge technology, an Auto Grid Restoration (AGR) scheme, on the 12 upgraded circuits, which deliver power to customers’ homes and businesses, and at the three substations. The new equipment will help facilitate an effective and efficient response should outages occur. The upgrades include 39 newly installed smart circuit devices that can be remotely controlled to isolate problems on the system, such as a tree contact on an overhead line, and temporarily switch which circuit is powering customers, resulting in quicker restoration times. Additionally, the devices provide NYSEG with real-time information about where and why an outage might be occurring, allowing the company to dispatch field crews directly to the problem location to make repairs.

“We’re excited to bring this impactful, state-of-the-art technology to our customers in Ithaca and Lansing,” said Eddie Mulholland, Director of Energy Control Centers at AVANGRID, NYSEG’s parent company. “AGR reduces the number of customers impacted by unplanned network outages. Additionally, using data from the smart circuit devices allows us to remotely identify the location of the source of an outage and deploy crews to make repairs more quickly with a reduced carbon footprint on the community.”

The installation of the Auto Grid Restoration scheme on these 12 circuits began in early 2020 and is NYSEG’s fourth AGR project to go live, with the first three installed in Silver Creek, Plattsburgh and West Seneca. The project is one of the several local investments NYSEG is making to update and improve its systems using the latest technologies and materials. All projects focus on meeting the region’s growing energy demands and providing customers with reliable, high-quality power.

NYSEG is a subsidiary of AVANGRID, Inc.

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