FirstEnergy will start work this Summer that will expand its Ellsworth Township substation.

The project will roughly quadruple the size of that substation, and run lines north along Route 45, then east to Austintown. The exact routing is still being determined.

Several reps from FirstEnergy gave a presentation at Wednesday night's Ellsworth trustees meeting.
About 90 percent of residents have already signed easement agreements, though we did talk to one man off camera who had concerns about noise and other impacts to his property next to that substation.

The upgrades also include doubling the height of new poles to accommodate the higher voltages.
Those will carry about 10 miles of new 69 kilovolt lines.
The current lines work sort of like a string of holiday lights - when one bulb goes out, the whole line goes down.
The company says the work will help prevent and minimize outages and meet future energy needs.

"By interconnecting the system, basically networking the system from Salt Springs all the way to Ellsworth, and then splitting basically the line you have today called the Berlin Lake-Boardman, from building that station. So any faults or any conditions that happen on one side of the line or the other side of the line, Ellsworth won't see an outage," explained FirstEnergy Transmission Planning Manager Jay Salem.

Construction will begin in August and should wrap up in Spring 2027.
If you couldn't make it out to Wednesday's meeting or you have more questions about the project, you can email transmissionprojects@firstenergycorp.com, or call 1-888-311-4737.