NY isn't building power transmission lines fast enough, leaving energy goals in jeopardy
April 19, 2023
- The overseer of NY's energy grid is worried that delays in adding transmission lines could slow the state's renewable build-out and jeopardize reliability during extreme weather.
- There are not enough transmission lines upstate to deliver the amounts of wind and solar energy being produced.
The television monitor on a wall in Richard Dewey’s office tells the story.
A pie chart offers a minute-by-minute breakdown of the fuel sources feeding New York’s energy grid, generating the electricity needed to power homes and businesses.
Shades of red and orange represent the fossil fuels natural gas and oil, much of it generated downstate. Blue represents hydro power from Niagara Falls and yellow the nuclear power from three upstate plants, two on Lake Ontario and a third near Rochester. Smaller slivers of green represent wind and solar power, mostly generated upstate.
It’s not a color scheme that appeals to Dewey, the president of the New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit tasked with making sure the grid remains reliable as the state pursues its twin goals of 70% reliance on renewable energy by 2030 and zero emissions by 2040.
“Just look at the production today,” Dewey says, gesturing to a state map on the monitor during an interview in his Rensselaer office last month. “Nuclear is all upstate, hydro is all upstate. Wind is all upstate. So this red here is New York City and Long Island. It's all fossil right now.”
To rejigger that mix, the state will need to send solar and wind energy generated upstate down to the lower Hudson Valley and New York City, which has seen surging amounts of fossil fuel generation and a rise in carbon emissions following the 2021 shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
But transmission lines – the overhead highway of high-voltage cables that delivers energy where it needs to go – are not coming online quickly enough, threatening the state’s ability to achieve its climate goals.
And the forced retirements of some fossil-fuel generation plants downstate – closures forced by state and New York City anti-pollution goals – make the challenge even steeper. Shutting down those plants before a steady supply of renewable energy is flowing south could lead to brownouts or worse during times of peak demand.
And so it’s not just climate goals in jeopardy.
During a snow and ice storm in February 2021, Texas’ power grid was overwhelmed by surging demand, leaving millions without power for days.
Dewey wants to make sure increased demand from the use of electric vehicles – estimated to climb to 7.7 million by 2040 − and electric heating systems doesn’t stress the grid to the point that New Yorkers are in danger.
“Failure to hit these (climate) targets will be a political dilemma for the policymakers and the elected officials,” Dewey said. “But a worse political problem is if we can't maintain reliability and the lights go out. It’s got an economic impact on New York. It’s got a health and safety impact on New York.”
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No place to go
NYISO reports from recent months offers a stark assessment of the challenges ahead.
Entire regions in upstate New York – the Southern Tier, Western New York and the North Country – have been declared “renewable generation pockets,” meaning the solar and wind energy generated there won’t have a path onto the grid unless more transmission is built.
One study predicts that on windy days in upstate New York, there won’t be enough transmission to deliver clean energy to the grid, forcing operators to reject output so lines don’t overload, known as curtailment. Imagine having two gallons of water and nothing but a gallon jug.
On an average day, more than 10% of the available renewable energy could be turned back. In some upstate pockets, more than 60% of available renewable energy sources won’t make it onto the grid, the report notes.
“We’re probably curtailing it right now,” Dewey says, pointing to the map. “So what that means is there’s more wind production in that northern zone than we can export from that zone because of transmission inadequacy.”
That becomes an issue, especially in towns along Lake Ontario, that have been flooded with developer proposals for wind farms in recent years.
Overloaded lines can, literally, sag from too much energy.
Help on the way?
Several major transmission projects are in the works.
In western New York, NYISO selected NextEra to develop a 20-mile $181 million project to access renewable energy from the Niagara Power Project.
And it’s reviewing bids from three developers vying to build transmission lines to move offshore wind energy generated off the coast of Long Island. The plan calls for installing transmission cables underground in Long Island and New York City. Once finished, energy could flow upstate as well.
But perhaps the most pivotal project for the north-south flow will be the $6 billion Champlain-Hudson Power Express, a project designed to deliver hydro power from Canada across 340 miles of cable. Nearly 200 miles of cable will be submerged in the Hudson River snaking its way to New York City.
Two years ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed off on the CHPE and the 174-mile Clean Path project that will move upstate energy south from Delaware County along existing rights-of-way before entering the Hudson in Windsor en route to Queens.
Completing those projects will be critical.
If projects are delayed for any reason, the grid’s ability to reliably serve customers would be jeapordized, NYISO says.
The obstacles ahead
There are plenty of hurdles ahead. Legal and regulatory challenges, for instance, have bogged down projects in the past.
The New York Regional Interconnect (NYRI), a $1.2 billion plan to move energy along 190 miles of transmission lines from Utica through Chenango and Broome counties and on to Orange County, was abandoned amid opposition from several upstate counties. Complaints centered on the impact it would have on the upstate landscape as well as electric bills.
The AC Transmission project − the biggest transmission upgrade in the state in 40 years – is scheduled for completion this summer but faces an eleventh-hour challenge to its plans to build a substation in Dover that would enhance the amount of renewable energy that can be delivered downstate.
Meanwhile, upstate lawmakers are grumbling that their constituents will be forced to pick up a portion of the tab for sending energy downstate.
Last month, Assemblywoman Didi Barrett, a Democrat who heads the energy committee, wrote to the state Public Service Commission, complaining that upstate ratepayers would have to kick in for $4.4 billion in transmission upgrades in three upstate regions.
Barrett, who represents Dutchess and Columbia counties, noted that more than 91 % of upstate energy is renewable while downstate it’s just 9%.
“Why is the cost of transmitting energy produced in Upstate New York being borne on Upstate ratepayers, rather than those actually consuming the energy?,” Barrett wrote.
PSC chairman Rory Christian defended the measure as necessary to meet the state’s climate goals, noting that downstate ratepayers have paid to keep three upstate nuclear plants operating, a bailout package estimated at $7.6 billion.
“The lack of transmission capacity in upstate New York negatively impacts ratepayers statewide by increasing the costs of renewable energy resources and curtailing the production of clean energy, among other things,” Christian notes.
He estimated customer bills could increase between 3% and 16% to finance the state’s climate goals, with percentage increases higher upstate because bills are lower. Downstate customers consume more than 50% of the energy in the state and so, in actual dollars, would be paying more.
“The projects are intended to facilitate statewide compliance with the Climate Act — not to confer a special benefit on a particular area of the State,” Christian added.
Who's a NIMBY?
Towns and counties along proposed transmission routes fear being cut out of the approval process, echoing arguments made by opponents of solar and wind farms planned for upstate.
“To me, there’s a trend here that is really unacceptable in a home rule state,” said state Sen. Joe Griffo, a Republican who waged a successful battle against the NYRI while he was Oneida County supervisor from 2003 to 2006.
“There seems to be total disregard for local authorities,” Griffo added. “They give you the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) thing. ‘Well, you guys don’t want anything.’ That’s a lot of BS. I’m prepared and willing to embrace clean energy. I just believe in a diversified portfolio.”
The AC Transmission project, designed to eliminate a longstanding energy bottleneck south of Albany that has hindered the north-south flow of energy, was first broached 16 years ago.
It’s the largest upgrade of transmission lines in 40 years and is scheduled to come months ahead of schedule.
By summer, NY Transco, the consortium of utilities building the southernmost leg of the project, says it will begin delivering upstate energy down to New York City and the lower Hudson Valley along 55 miles of transmission lines that begin in Pleasant Valley.
Over the course of a two-year construction phase, 1930’s-era towers were replaced by 90-foot tall steel monopoles that appear to blend into the sky.
The New York Energy Solution, as the section is known, will link up with an 86-mile stretch of transmission lines running from Oneida County to Albany.
To counter the sort of opposition that dogged the NYRI project, most of the project was built on existing rights of way.
And years of outreach preceded the filing of Transco’s application.
Hundreds of homeowners along the route were contacted. A full-time agricultural inspector coordinated with neighboring farmers to gauge their harvesting and planting cycles and determine where their animals grazed.
In Pleasant Valley, a station that helps control the flow of electricity on hot days was moved nearly a mile north amid concerns the original design would have led to trees being removed in a neighborhood.
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Need to communicate
Transco president Victor Mullin said the move allowed the project to remain on utility-owned land.
“We got there early, we got there often,” Mullin said. “And we listened to the stakeholders. We took their suggestions and we actually saved ratepayers a lot of money by doing so…You’ve got to communicate.”
Griffo said one of the lessons developers learned from the NYRI battle was the importance of using existing rights-of-way when possible “as opposed to traversing all new landscape and causing problems in communities.”
Still, Transco faces opposition from community groups in Dover opposed to its plan to build a substation in a former junkyard across from the Cricket Valley Energy Center.
Trees were being cleared from the property when environmental groups successfully petitioned a judge to put the project on hold while it challenged the town’s February decision to approve Transco’s permit.
The two groups – The Concerned Citizens of Dover and Friends of the Great Swamp – are concerned contaminated water from the property will leach into nearby wetlands during construction.
“I don’t want come off as Dover is anti-green energy,” said Jill Fieldstein of Concerned Citizens. “That’s not what is happening here.”
She said she’s concerned the impact on the surrounding environment wasn’t taken into consideration when the plan was approved. The Great Swamp courses through four towns in a 62,000-acre watershed.
Transco said the project, which will take up five acres of a 16-acre property, will be designed to limit the impacts on the environment. Some 250 plantings will be added.
But Transco vice president Paul Haering says the group’s challenge will likely impact the timetable for delivering renewable energy downstate.
“I think everybody wants to talk about going green,” Haering said. “But there's a lot of community concern about where projects are located and the potential impacts. So, I think that's the big challenge that we see.”
If those challenges aren’t overcome, the state risks missing its climate deadlines.
“There's great momentum in terms of building renewables and achieving our aggressive climate goals, but with that there's gonna be some impacts,” Haering said. “How do we balance listening to stakeholders, embedding their input into the projects, but also being able to work on a reasonable timeline so we don't spend 16 years to get projects from start to finish? Because we just don't have that luxury.”
NY isn't building power lines fast enough, hurting energy goals (democratandchronicle.com)
Thomas Zambito
New York State Team
USA Today Network
Mobile: 914-393-0863
Twitter: @TomZambito
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