Rare look at how PSEG Long Island keeps your lights on during winter storms
PSEG has four centers where they keep an eye on the power grid, overseeing everything from transmission lines, to outages, to field crews.
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It's all hands on deck in the PSEG Long Island command center, where their goal is to monitor and prevent outages.
"Our control rooms are 24/7 operations so we have someone always looking at these alarms," said Alex Goncalves, with PSEG Long Island.
They have four centers where they keep an eye on the power grid, overseeing everything from transmission lines, to outages, to field crews.
They are also preparing for the winter, working to reinforce power lines.
Crews are out working on utility poles making upgrades to them so they can withstand higher winds during a storm. This is just part of the work they do before winter and also all year long.
"We're replacing a cross arm, an old cross arm with a new fiberglass cross arm," said Abhinav Kumar, with PSEG Long Island.
PSEG says they have updated hundreds of miles of power lines and tens of thousands of utility poles to withstand extreme weather.
"We identify areas where we see a lot of overhead issues, and we have gone and converted them to underground in many of those areas," said Kumar.
PSEG also knows when homes lose power, it means residents could be without heat and food.
Some of the other tools PSEG uses are smart switches. They alert the command center where outages are in a neighborhood.
So far, they have installed 900 in the last 11 years.
PSEG says they are especially helpful during large storms.
PSEG says because of ongoing maintenance, it has seen power outages reduce nearly 50% since 2014.
