Kremer’s Corner: The lights still on for now in Nassau

Jerry Kremer

There is no doubt that we are lucky to live on Long Island for a variety of reasons. Our quality of life is superb. We have the greatest parks and beaches. Our schools are among the best in the entire state and there are many attractions available to keep our children active and engaged. One of the only things we lack is the guaranty that every time you turn on your wall switch, your lights will turn on.

Most of us brushed off any concern when we learned of the July 13 power outage in New York City that affected hundreds of thousands of people on the West Side. After all, it didn’t affect Nassau or Suffolk counties. But like it or not, Long Island, like the rest of downstate New York, is in danger of a similar outage if we are faced with a prolonged summer heat blast.

Luckily, the island has been blessed with a competent power company in the form of PSE&G. They provide efficient service and haven’t become the public enemy that the old Long Island Lighting Company was. However, no utility company can guarantee that the systems will never breakdown. The 1977 blackout shut down regional power for 25 hours. The 2003 event, which caused billions in business losses, lasted two days.

If you weren’t a resident of the island in 2003, or just plain forgot, the whole blackout debacle started in Ohio when a tree branch crashed onto a high voltage utility line and the result was a cascading series of massive shutdowns throughout the East Coast. After that memorable event, the federal government promised that such events would never happen again. While utility safety procedures were dramatically improved, not one federal dollar was spent to make the power grid more reliable.

On a typical day, New York City uses 11,000 megawatts of power. To simplify it, one megawatt powers 100 homes. In the course of the year, the city uses billions of megawatts to keep the lights on. In 2021, the Indian Point nuclear facility will cease operating and its 2,000 megawatts will no longer be available. The state has promised us that the loss of Indian Point will be made up by wind and solar facilities. But to date, there aren’t enough of either sources coming on line.

New Yorkers must face the fact that the power distribution system in the downstate region is outdated. No one is building any new massive power plants to provide replacement power. It is a fact that since 1988, no new plants have come on line, with the exception of a smaller conversion in Dutchess County and the Caithness plant in Yaphank. That facility opened in 2009 and provides at least 10 percent of all of the power requirements of the island.

One fact that is rarely discussed in the power industry is that both New York City and Long Island rely on tiny power facilities known as “peakers.” Many were built back in the 1980s and were never meant to be long-term sources of backup power. Having represented Caithness at one time, I know that the company would love to build an additional power plant, but has been stymied by outside interests.

Recently, the state announced a plan to build an offshore wind facility near Montauk Point, but in its early stage, it has been met with local opposition. Solar power is appearing on Long Island, but neither source promises to be available in the near future. So, like the rest of the region, we are at risk for power failures, whether we like it or not.

Natural gas is a reliable source of energy, but efforts to increase the capacity of existing gas lines have met fierce opposition as well. While the state is planning for a fossil-fuel-free future, there is still a need for basic power in the interim and that is not going to happen. So the recent West Side blackout didn’t affect us, but we have no guaranty that it can’t happen to us.

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