Two weeks ago, JCP&L filed a rate case built around an unusual promise: raise rates but cover the increased cost for customers until 2028. That story is still playing out in front of the Board of Public Utilities, elected officials and the court of public opinion around the state.
The rate case, however, is just one line item on a much longer list Doug Mokoid has had to manage every day since taking over as JCP&L’s President in June of 2024.
That list starts with trees.
Mokoid doesn’t just lead the state’s largest utility by service area, one that covers 42% of New Jersey’s land mass — he leads one that’s most impacted by natural terrain. The JCP&L service area, which stretches from the mountains of the northwest corridor down to a Jersey Shore that can’t stop growing, is greatly impacted by trees. How much so? Consider this:
- Trees were the leading cause of outages across JCP&L’s territory in 2025, responsible for roughly 41% of all customer interruption hours;
- Trees within JCP&L’s own rights of way accounted for just 5.48% of outage hours last year;
- Trees outside JCP&L’s rights of way — largely trees the company doesn’t own or control — accounted for nearly six times that, at 28.94%.
It all comes with the territory, Mokoid said.
“We need to be there for our customers,” he said. “Electricity is the lifeblood of our communities, and we need to be there for them.”
Mokoid understands the challenges of the state. He is a lifelong Jersey guy. He grew up in Pennsville, earned a mechanical engineering degree at Rutgers and a law degree at Rutgers-Camden, and arrived at JCP&L from the top regional job at Atlantic City Electric.
But that doesn’t mean it’s been same-old, same-old since making the move.
The weather is more unpredictable — and more catastrophic — than ever, he said. Storms that used to hit once a decade now show up a couple of times a year. Mokoid points to the stretch of July 3-6, four straight days of severe weather that took down 1,700 poles in northern New Jersey alone.
All of this is playing out against a political backdrop where affordability is the word of the moment. Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s rate freeze hangs over every conversation about utility costs in this state, and Mokoid’s job is to invest in reliability while making sure customers don’t feel like they’re footing the bill for it — at least not yet.
Mokoid talked about all this and more in a recent conversation with BINJE. Here is more of the conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
BINJE: You cover 42% of New Jersey’s land area. What does that actually mean day to day — is it really one territory, or several different jobs?
DM: Our territory is unique — we go from the northwestern part of the state, which is very mountainous, to South Jersey. Driving around Newton and Summit, I realized how many mountains and trees we have in North Jersey. Then you’ve got rapid growth at the Jersey Shore, in areas like Ocean County, where the population is exploding.
BINJE: How has the nature of the storms themselves changed?
DM: We’re seeing more frequent severe weather events. Back in February, we had a once-in-20-year blizzard — almost 2 feet of snow, significant winds. Our system held up well because of the investments we’d made, and we got every customer back within a couple of days.
In the July 3 through July 6 storm, we saw damage in some areas like we saw in Sandy. That tells us we need to keep hardening our system — and I think our customers want that too.
BINJE: And those storms came right after another incredible weather event.
DM: Right. On the front end of that July storm, we had a historic heat wave. We used to talk about heat waves here as a couple days in the low-to-mid 90s. This was three, four, five days approaching the upper 90s, with heat indexes of 110-115 degrees.
Energy usage for two of those days approached our all-time peak load — back-to-back. Our system held up extremely well. We were prepared, brought in additional resources, and our crews worked around the clock.
BINJE: Let’s get back to the trees. One piece of your rate filing is additional tree trimming and removal. What’s driving that?
DM: We surveyed our entire territory and identified over 21,000 dead or diseased ash trees. We’re not waiting for the rate case — we’re taking them down now. I look at it as avoiding 21,000 outages when those trees eventually fall. Most of them are off right-of-way — we don’t own them. But I care about our customers, and I don’t want them out of power, so we’re acting now.
BINJE: We know the terrain can be tough in some of your areas. Are you looking at putting lines underground?
DM: Where vegetation is especially expansive, we’ll look at selective undergrounding to prevent tree-related outages. We’re using AI and our data to identify where we’re seeing the worst tree-related outages — and in some cases, it makes sense to put those line sections underground. It’s selective, not a rebuild of entire circuits underground.
We’re focused on the grid of the future — sectionalizing the grid, more system automation, and hardening against severe weather.
BINJE: Are the investments actually showing results?
DM: Our reliability performance improved 15% from 2024 to 2025, and we’re seeing another 38% improvement year to date, from 2025 to 2026. Where we’re investing, customers are seeing it — that’s real.
In areas where we’ve rebuilt total circuits in northern New Jersey — commitments from our last rate case — we’ve seen major reliability gains. We’re doing extensive tree trimming, hardening poles and wires, and adding sectionalizing devices at the same time. Some circuits are seeing 80% improvement in reliability from that combined work.
BINJE: You’ve described JCP&L as the lowest-cost provider in the state. What does that actually mean?
DM: We have the lowest distribution rates in the state among our peers, and the lowest average customer bill. Among Northeast and Mid-Atlantic utilities, we’re among the lowest too.
It’s one thing to be a lowest-cost provider. It’s another to be one with significantly improved reliability — that’s what we’re striving for every day.
BINJE: Back to the rate case. It is built around eating the increased cost to customers until 2028. How confident are you in how it will land?
DM: There’ll be questions, there’ll be concerns — that’s fair. People want to understand what’s in this filing and what benefits they’ll see. This filing lets us keep investing for our customers while, with the offsets we’ve identified, holding off distribution rate increases until 2028.
