LIPA’s Moves Forward on Storm Hardening Program to Help Protect the Island’s Electric System Against Severe Storm Damage

LIPA’s 4th Annual Island-wide Drill Stresses Need for Being Prepared for Outages Should a Hurricane Hit LI This Year

Many Companies Island-wide to Participate in Today’s Drill

Hicksville, N.Y. - June 7, 2006 - The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) today announced that its multi-faceted, $500-million, 20-year program to reduce the amount of damage that can be inflicted upon Long Island’s electric Transmission and Distribution (T&D) System by severe storms such as hurricanes and tropical storms is moving forward, but that Long Island would still experience wide-scale outages should a hurricane or major tropical storm strike the Island this year.

LIPA’s 17-point program, the first of its kind for Long Island’s electric grid, is designed to improve the T&D system’s durability, resilience and restoration capabilities, which will help lessen the number of service outages caused by severe storms and enhance the ability to restore service quicker when severe storm damage occurs.

In addition to its normal annual capital expenditures to improve and upgrade the Island’s electric transmission and distribution system, LIPA will spend $25 million per year over the next 20 years on targeted storm hardening efforts.

“Since Long Island is vulnerable to hurricanes, severe lightning storms and mini-tornadoes, ice storms and blizzards, and heat storms it is imperative that LIPA implement this Severe Storm Hardening Initiative to
help protect the welfare of our more than 1.1 million customers, which amounts to a population of over three million people,” said LIPA CEO/President Richard M. Kessel.

“But as our storm hardening program moves forward in the years ahead, Long Island still needs to be prepared for wide-scale outages should we get hit with a hurricane this season, which is predicted to be more active than previous years in the Atlantic,” Mr. Kessel said.

“Every meteorologist who has looked at the aftermath of Katrina knows that all our forecasting technology in the world cannot protect the fragile connections that keep our society running in the face of nature’s ferocious potential,” said Bill Evans, Senior Meteorologist for WABC Eyewitness News.  “LIPA’s Island-wide drill is a crucial element in the battle plan for being prepared to meet the hurricane that has not yet formed and has not been named, but will surely come ashore in the New York - Long Island region.  With LIPA doing its part, we need to do
ours.  We need to prepare now for the hurricane next time.”

As in the past, businesses and residential customers Island-wide will be participating in today’s drill that calls for customers to cut back on non-essential electric use between the hours of noon and 3PM as a signal
that they are taking the steps necessary to prepare for a hurricane or major storm hitting Long Island.

E-mail notices were sent to all of LIPA’s major accounts.  Suffolk and Nassau counties’ Emergency Management Offices sent out notices on today’s drill to their contact lists. And LIPA notified the public about the drill through public service advertisements, billing statement inserts and its Web site.

“Good Samaritan Hospital Medial Center will be participating in today’s drill by reducing lighting in all corridors and turning off any non-essential equipment and lighting in other areas of our facility,” said the hospital’s Director of Engineering, Robert Johnson.

“We will reduce consumption by approximately 400 KW and we’re please to participate in today’s drill,” said Bill Trillo, Regional Director of Facilities for Northrop Grumman.

King Kullen’s Manager of Mechanical Maintenance and Engineering, Stephen Mitchell said: “Our stores are equipped with an emergency curtailment key switch. This key switch will turn off case lights, 50% of ceiling lights and raise the air conditioning temperature of the stores three degrees. We will also not use any extra appliances such as balers and compactors during the drill.”

Some of the other businesses participating in today’s drill include: Suffolk County, Cablevision, Newsday,  Stop and Shop, Westfield Sunrise Mall, Roosevelt Field Mall, Brookhaven Town, and SUNY Stony Brook.

LIPA’s Severe Storm Hardening Initiative was developed after months of study and review of the lessons learned from the extraordinary damage caused in the Gulf region by last year’s Hurricane Katrina, this summer’s power outages in Queens, and by an extensive re-evaluation of the vulnerabilities of LIPA’s expansive island-wide electric system.

“This is an unprecedented undertaking,” said Mr. Kessel.  “Never before has such an extensive study been conducted and such a wide ranging series of comprehensive storm hardening strategies advanced.

2007 Storm Hardening Projects
During 2007, LIPA targeted storm hardening program will:

* Upgrade 80 ASU, or automatic distribution switches, locations to help minimize the number of customers impacted by a fault on a distribution by automatically isolating the problem circuit from the rest of the system;

* Replace 420 critical distribution poles to strengthen vulnerable circuits;

* Harden 15 Expressway/parkway crossings to minimize the potential for power lines falling across vital transportation routes during a storm;

* Harden/Upgrade over 140 locations along the LIRR rights-of-way to minimize disruptions to Railroad service during storm events; and

* Remove over 10,000 hazardous trees across Long Island to help prevent outages caused by aged out and rotting trees and tree limbs taking down power lines during storms.

Certain elements of the program will expand upon actions already undertaken by LIPA through the investment of some $2.5 billion over the last nine years that have already significantly improved LIPA’s T&D system reliability.

Additionally, as the storm hardening program moves forward, LIPA will continue to: draw upon its own major storm restoration experiences; monitor lessons learned by other utilities; continue to assess the improvements in electric system components, utilize materials and techniques to allow a quicker, more effective implementation of the
severe storm program.

Recognizing that LIPA’s extensive electric T&D system, both underground and overhead, is vulnerable to catastrophic damage from downed trees and flying debris caused by excessive winds, and flooding caused by storm surges in low lying areas on both the south and north shores, LIPA’s Severe Storm Hardening Initiative sets out three main goals to achieve.

They include improving the electric T&D systems:

* Durability by hardening the electric system to lessen the potential of damage from storms;

* Resilience by enhancing the electric system’s flexibility to continue service despite storm damage;

* Restoration capabilities by reducing the time needed to restore service following storms.

To achieve these three main objectives, the Severe Storm Hardening Initiative outlines 17 specific program elements, which include such things as:

* Reconfigure or reconstruct substations to avoid damage from floodingand wind;
* Improve transmission and distribution line design and construction to withstand high winds;
* Reduce the impact of tree contact on distribution lines;
* Seek innovative alternatives to undergrounding transmission and distribution lines in flood and surge zones;
* Protect distribution equipment from storm surge damage;
* Inspect and replace inadequate poles and equipment;
* Leverage LIPA’s leading distribution automation system to manage the scope of outages, and speed reconfiguration and restoration;
* Employ Distributed Generation and Microgrids;
* Upgrade Outage Management Software;
* Improve voice and data communications capabilities;
* Implement a more comprehensive resource control system to better manage the use of field personnel during a restoration effort; and
* Improve damage assessment process.

“The Severe Storm Hardening Initiative will be in addition to all of the routine capital improvement work we do annually to upgrade and expand our system to reliably meet the ever-increasing demand for electricity on Long Island,” said Mr. Kessel.  “We spend, on average, about $200 million annually on capital improvements, which is the main reason we have the most reliable overhead electric system in New York State, and one of the most reliable in the nation.”

LIPA, a non-profit municipal electric utility, owns the retail electric Transmission and Distribution System on Long Island and provides electric service to over 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. In terms of customers served, LIPA is the 3rd largest municipal electric utility in the nation and the 6th largest in terms of electricity delivered. LIPA does not provide natural gas service or own any on-island electric generating assets.

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Media Relations: (516) 222-7700
Media Pager: (516) 525-LIPA
media.relations@lipower.org

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