The majority of Connecticut’s Central Coast is less than 90 miles from the World’s Financial Hub, New York City. The actual fiber distance is shorter allowing several New York firms to operate back-up data centers in our area.

The nature of Connecticut’s Central Coast (The United Illuminating service territory,) urban and densely populated rural locations, lends itself to a well maintained and reliable electric system. The United Illuminating Company is committed to reinvesting in infrastructure to maintain reliability. The company’s current 10-year plan shows a $900 million investment in infrastructure improvements.

This continued commitment to improvement is why The United Illuminating Company maintains first-quartile SAIFI and SAIDI scores when compared with other utilities nationally.

•	2008 Monthly System Average SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index): 68 minutes
•	2009 Monthly System Average SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index):  .058
•	2009 Monthly Average SARFI (System Average RMS Frequency Index): .30

SARFI is used to measure power quality in the form of voltage sag performance at UI's substations on a monthly basis and is a general indicator of power quality on the distribution system. SARFI indices are influenced by both distribution and transmission events and include major events such as major storms.  The SARFI index represents the number of voltage variation incidents at the substation bus averaged over 30 days.

Because of proximity to New York and Boston, Connecticut is very well connected with fiber lines. Carriers who service the state include: Lightpath, Fibertech, AT&T, Verizon, Optimum, Bell Canada, Level 3, Savvis, Cogent, Global Crossing and RCN Metro Optical Networks

For years The United Illuminating Company (UI) and the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund have been national leaders in energy conservation. The fund provides cash incentives to switch to energy efficient lighting and cooling systems. In addition UI engineers will work directly with your data center to find customized energy saving options. UI is able to incentivize almost any piece of electric powered equipment if it is proven to be more energy efficient than other products on the market.

Through the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund data centers can take advantage of grants to develop on-site renewable generation in the form of solar panels or fuel cells. Understandably most data centers would use these options only as supplementary to a building's power supply.

Connecticut and The United Illuminating Company (UI) continue to make improvements to the local grid to improve capacity. In 2009 UI and Northeast Utilities completed work on a 69-mile 345 kV transmission line to bring more power to Southeast Connecticut and reduce electric congestion. On the distribution side UI continues to make investments in new substations and upgrades to meet future capacity needs. In 2008 UI entered a new substation into service in Trumbull and others are planned for the region.

In generation Connecticut has planned for the future authorizing 700 MW of new peaking generation to be on-line by 2011. UI has partnered with NRG to build 400 MW of this new generation that will be used for high electricity demand days.