More than $15 million in grant funding has been awarded to improve electric grid reliability and resilience in rural Pennsylvania.

While several neighboring counties — Potter, Elk and Warren — will benefit from the 2024 Pennsylvania Grid Resilience Grants (PA GRG) funding, none of it will find its way to McKean County.

“This is federal funding that came to the state, and the majority of it went to the small, rural electric cooperatives, which we don’t have in the Bradford area,” said state Rep. Martin Causer, R-Turtlepoint.

That may be frustrating news for county residents as outages have plagued households and businesses, throughout the last year in particular. The populace was puzzled last August when an hours-long outage occurred on a calm late summer day. Days later, outages were caused by, Penelec spokesman Todd Myers said, “high heat and humidity with lots of demand for electricity to power air conditioners.”

An early December power surge in Foster Township blew out appliances, furnaces and more at homes in the area. In late December, a flash was seen for miles, caught on video and posted on social media when a tree pulled down 1,000 feet of power lines.

Penelec crews were in the area this spring, maintaining trees along its right-of-ways via helicopter. Further, Causer said, “There have been ongoing discussions with Penelec about the issues in the Bradford area and they are telling me they’re planning significant work in the Bradford area, including a lot of tree maintenance, circuit improvements and upgrades.

“It’s an ongoing issue and one that we need to continue pressing them on, to do the work to increase reliability,” Causer continued.

Meanwhile, nearly 60,000 other rural Pennsylvanians should benefit from the grants designed to “improve the all-hazards resilience of the electric grid and prevent disruptive events,” according to the Department of Environmental Protection, which distributes the grants aimed at both preventing outages and shortening their duration.

In a press release announcing the funding, DEP officials stated, “Pennsylvania is experiencing more and longer power outages due to population growth, increasing energy demands, severe weather fueled by climate change and aging infrastructure. Frequent and extended outages also impact Pennsylvanian businesses, healthcare, emergency response and utility services.”

Overall, 20 substations will be upgraded – 16 fitted with smart grid sensors and monitors – 200 pieces of smart grid equipment installed, 8,000 power line poles inspected and 3,000 miles of vegetation cleared, as well as the addition of elevated equipment, underground cables, automation and physical protections in some communities.

Projects were selected in part due to how often communities experience frequent and/or prolonged outages. Local areas set to receive first-round funding include:

United Electric Cooperative in Jefferson, Clearfield, and Elk counties — $5,049,000 to revitalize an outdated substation using state-of-the-art materials and equipment, replace/relocate power lines increasing efficiency and capacity, implement smart grid technology and conduct extensive tree trimming in targeted areas.

Northwestern Rural Electric Cooperative in Erie, Crawford, Warren, and Venango counties — $834,400 for the installation of a new transmission line with advanced smart grid technology to add essential network redundancy. Through added back feed, power disruptions will go from days to seconds reducing total system outage time by 84 percent, DEP stated.

Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative in Bradford, Tioga and Potter counties — $932,200 for the installation of smart grid technology and substation hardening, providing system operators a remote, real-time, accurate visualization of the entire distribution grid to troubleshoot and prevent system issues. Power outages in the territory will be reduced by 15 percent and outage time will be reduced by 20 percent, according to the DEP release.

The PA GRG Program is funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Grid Resilience State/Tribal Formula Grant Program. Another grant round will open in fall 2024.

For more information, visit the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s website.