​Pepco Holdings has announced a plan to spend up to $720 million to upgrade the energy grid throughout Washington, D.C. to enhance reliability and increase resiliency to benefit customers.

Construction on the “Capital Grid Project” is expected to begin this year and finish near 2026. Because of the shift of young workers in D.C. over the past decade, many neighborhoods are putting a strain on the city’s system. This plan will help to meet new requirements of the changing economic landscape.

“We’re trying to set the city up for the next 20 to 30 years,” Pepco chief executive David Velazquez said. “We’re trying to put the infrastructure in place to allow the city to grow, to allow us to serve our customers reliably.”

The plan must be approved by the D.C. Public Service Commission and would give several substations throughout D.C. an upgrade to the latest technologies. Pepco is also planning to build a new substation in the Mount Vernon Triangle area, which will serve residents in the Shaw and NoMa neighborhoods, a rapidly growing area with several new apartment buildings.

Pepco will deposit more than $72 million in a “customer investment fund” and set aside more than $11 million for energy efficiency and conservation programs in an effort to benefit low-income residents. The company will also expend $21.55 million for various pilot projects, including smart energy infrastructure, which will benefit Pepco customers by making equipment less vulnerable to storms, equipment failures, and other unexpected events that may cause outages.

The upgrade was being planned long before the $6.8 billion merger with Exelon and company executives say it would have been completed even if the merger was not approved by the Public Service Commission.

An original version of this story can be found in the Washington Post and a complete overview of Pepco’s Capital Grid Project can be found here.