HOBOKEN — Thursday morning, an agreement was signed by Mayor Dawn Zimmer, Rob Gorur of the Department of Energy, Ralph LaRossa (president of PSE &G), Robert Hannah (president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities), and a representative from Sandia National Laboratories. The agreement will entail the creation of a smart grid energy project in Hoboken that will make Hoboken’s energy sources more dependable during a blackout. Mayor Zimmer spoke about the Department of Energy’s visit to Hoboken after Hurricane Sandy, and how she offered Hoboken to be an energy learning city, to help the DOE learn about what they can do to help prevent cities in easily-floodable areas from losing their power when storms and floods occur.
The Smart Grid project will keep power on during storms for people that can’t afford to lose power, such as first responders, firefighters, medical centers, and senior centers, all of which lost power during Hurricane Sandy.
The city also expects to add pumps and a green infrastructure that will collect as much rain water as possible to deal with flooding during storms.
During Hurricane Sandy, one of Hoboken’s substations that provides a lot of the city’s energy was submerged in four feet of water. PSE &G’s Energy Strong Program, currently being reviewed by the Board of Public Utilities, would protect such stations from situations like that in the future, by combining substations, rising them up, and making sure that they are more resilient.
Although the energy agreement and new additions will be costly, Mayor Zimmer said that “it’s worth it to make this investment” because of all the residents and businesses that were, and are, so greatly affected by flooding, economically wise. As of now, there is no definite time frame of when the Smart Grid, or any of the other additions, will be finished. — Katherine Desimine
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