Northport power plant set production milestone amid summer heat wave

As the state rethinks a mandate to retire fossil fuel power plants by 2040 and the federal government on Wednesday nixed a large swath of the outer continental shelf for wind-energy leasing, Long Island’s largest natural gas plant recently hit a milestone: its biggest production day ever.

National Grid's Northport power plant, Long Island's largest and one of its oldest, had its "highest daily output day ever" during the late June heat wave, the company said. It's no small feat for a plant whose construction began in 1967. Higher usage is keeping it busy, its owner said.   

"We have seen that energy demand in the state is rising sharply," National Grid spokeswoman Molly Gilson said in response to Newsday questions Wednesday.

National Grid did not disclose the specific output of the plant on the day it broke the output record, but the entire power station's maximum capacity is listed by the Long Island Power Authority at 1,564 megawatts. The four-stack power station on Long Island Sound has four separate steam units and a separate smaller peak-power plant at 16 megawatts.

During another heat wave this week, power consumption on Wednesday for all of Long Island exceeded 5,000 megawatts at the peak, as it did during the heat wave last month.

The output comes as the Trump administration puts the squeeze on green energy, freezing new permits for wind farms and eliminating tax credits for home solar installations.

On Wednesday, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management took the further action of rescinding "all" designated wind-energy areas on the outer continental shelf, affecting some 3.5 million acres of currently unleased waters, including the New York Bight off Long Island and New Jersey. The declaration doesn’t impact previously leased areas or those under construction, a BOEM spokeswoman said.

The agency said the move ends "speculative wind development" and it is "de-designating over 3.5 million acres of unleased federal waters previously targeted for offshore wind development across the Gulf of America, Gulf of Maine, the New York Bight, California, Oregon, and the Central Atlantic."

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which administers wind-energy programs, said it was "continuing to review the implications of this announcement," though it added rescinding the future lease areas "does not affect existing leases and therefore does not have an immediate impact on NYSERDA’s offshore wind program." 

Earlier this month the New York State Energy Planning Board released a draft plan that predicted an unspecified number of existing fossil fuel power plants around the state "will remain essential parts of electric-grid reliability and energy affordability." The board noted the state will "seek to carefully manage the retirement of existing assets and evaluate whether there is need for new generation that is compatible with long-term policy targets."

The new plan is almost certain to extend the life of the Northport plant. LIPA’s $4.8 billion contract with the National Grid plants expires in 2028, but LIPA can extend them into the future. LIPA had previously examined plans to repower the plants, with either drastic upgrades or entirely new plants built on the same property, around a decade ago, but pulled them back amid predictions of declining demand.

More recent calculations predict power consumption gradually increasing on Long Island after a decade of decline, amid an increase in use of electric cars and electric heat pumps, and the potential for data centers. The repowering plan for Northport alone would cost $1.2 billion to $2.1 billion, LIPA said. LIPA at the time of the study found that retiring just one of the plant’s four main generators could save customers around $300 million over 20 years.

Earlier this year, energy newsletter PeakLoad reported that National Grid had retained two outside firms to examine the possible auction of its Long Island plants and their combined 4,000 megawatts of capacity. Asked if the report was true, Gilson said, "We do not comment on market speculation or rumor."

National Grid, a United Kingdom-based energy conglomerate, acquired the power plants as part of its 2007 acquisition of KeySpan, which acquired them when the former Long Island Lighting Co. was split in two in the late 1990s.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.