Electricity Infrastructure Starting to Buckle

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - The increasing demand for electricity statewide is pushing thousands of miles of aging underground equipment to its limits, particularly in hard-to-reach spots under busy city streets, Connecticut utility officials said.

Waterbury, Stamford, Hartford and Meriden each have experienced downtown outages in the past seven months because of transformer explosions, underground fires and other equipment failures.

The state's two largest electricity providers, Connecticut Light & Power Co. and United Illuminating, both have multimillion-dollar projects under way to replace and upgrade equipment above and below ground.

CL&P is a unit of Northeast Utilities; United Illuminating's parent company is UIL Holdings Corp.

Officials from both companies said Thursday that demand for more electricity is driving the projects, although aging equipment is also a concern.

'Reliability is our primary issue,' said Mitch Gross, a CL&P spokesman. 'When customers flip the switch, they expect the power to be there, so we need to continually take the steps necessary to ensure it is.'

Yet working with transformers and other equipment under city streets can be difficult, costly and -- as evidenced this week -- dangerous and potentially lethal.

On Wednesday, a Long Island man working for a CL&P contractor was killed when a transformer exploded while he was performing routine maintenance below a downtown Waterbury street.

Authorities said Thursday it does not appear related to an underground explosion and fire in October -- the sixth such incident in downtown Waterbury in about 18 months -- but that it highlighted the difficulty and dangers associated with upgrading the systems.

A spokesman from the state Department of Public Utility said Thursday they will investigate the incident, in which 34-year-old Elias Anchundia, of Lake Grove, N.Y., was killed and another worker was injured.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration also is investigating.

A second, smaller explosion occurred late Wednesday in the same area where Anchundia was killed, but no injuries were reported.

CL&P has almost 22,500 miles of distribution lines -- about 5,600 miles of which are underground, primarily in urban areas -- and almost 276,400 transformers in the 149 towns and cities it serves.

It has a $3 billion, multiyear project in the works for everything from trimming trees around power lines to upgrading transformers and substations.

Since July, underground explosions and equipment failures have caused outages in Stamford, Meriden, Hartford and Waterbury.

In October, a spliced wire in an underground cable in downtown Waterbury caught fire and caused an explosion that rattled windows, knocked out power, sent a manhole cover flying 30 feet into the air and destroyed a car.

CL&P plans to spend about $10 million over the next three years to replace the downtown power grid, which includes about six miles of cable and 24 transformers.

'In my opinion and the mayor's opinion, they've been very diligent about coming to the table and trying to address the problems and concerns,' Joe Geary, the city's director of operations, said of CL&P.

Gross, the CL&P spokesman, said the utility has major upgrades in the works for Stamford, Meriden and other cities in addition to ongoing projects in smaller communities throughout the company's coverage area.

United Illuminating, which has approximately 320,000 customers in 17 towns from Fairfield to North Branford, recently added new equipment to isolate problems on particular lines.

The items, called 'reclosers,' prompt a temporary outage in a small area rather than letting it cascade to other, larger areas and potentially cause fires, explosions or large-scale outages.

UI spokesman Al Carbone said that while the vast majority of its equipment is overhead, reaching the underground lines in New Haven and Bridgeport can be challenging.

The company has a $120 million upgrade program planned over the next three years to inspect all equipment and replace the aging, outdated items before problems occur, Carbone said.

'We're seeing in many areas that demand is growing, and it's going to grow even more in the next five to 10 years,' he said.