FirstEnergy Corp. said it will spend $120 million this year to upgrade its electric system in the eight-county northwest Ohio territory of its Toledo Edison subsidiary.

The bulk of the money will be spent on distribution and transmission projects, some of which were begun last year, the utility said.

“We continually review and re-evaluate our system, looking for projects that can provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of our customers,” said Rich Sweeney, Toledo Edison president. “This ongoing work, in addition to equipment inspections, improves our system, helping to reduce the number and length of service disruptions our customers might experience.”

The major projects scheduled for 2015 include the completion of a new transmission substation south of Perrysburg, the continuation of work on a new 345-kilovolt transmission line, the replacement of transformers and breakers, and the inspection and replacement of utility poles and other equipment, Akron-based FirstEner-gy said.

More than $76 million of the $120 million has been budgeted for transmission-related projects owned by American Transmission Systems Inc., a FirstEnergy subsidiary.

The utility expects to spend $10 million to complete the new substation, which is south of Perrysburg and will help enhance service reliability in that area. Work on the substation, which is in a rural area near Dowling Road between I-75 and State Rt. 25, began last year.

FirstEnergy will spend about $18 million to complete a new 48-mile transmission line that runs through parts of Fulton, Henry, Lucas, and Wood counties. The line is needed to strengthen grid reliability and it will give Toledo Edison more flexibility to reroute power when necessary.

The utility also said it will spend $3 million to replace a large transformer at a substation near Sylvania, and an additional $4 million to upgrade equipment on its distribution circuits throughout the northwest Ohio region.

The equipment upgrades include new step transformer banks, lightning protection, insulators, cross arms and braces, grounds, and animal guards. FirstEnergy said all of those items will help reduce the number of outages and improve reliability.

FirstEnergy also will spend $2.2 million to inspect and possibly replace 21,000 utility poles in the Toledo Edison territory, and another $1.5 million to replace the 345-kilovolt circuit breakers at a substation at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power station.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published March 20, 2015, 4:00 a.m.