Use of Long Island's old power plants rose 260% during winter deep freeze

This winter’s big freeze led Long Island’s electric grid to rely on two energy sources that were once considered dinosaurs: fuel oil and the region’s oldest power plants.

During the period of the coldest weather, between Jan. 23 and Feb. 9, use of the Island's biggest power plants, including in Northport and Port Jefferson, increased 260% compared with the prior year, according to National Grid Ventures, which owns them.

In addition, the company said, several of its smaller gas-powered turbine generators, called peakers and traditionally run during the peak summer months, ran for "extended hours to keep up with demand."

One cluster of peakers in Glenwood Landing ran "continuously for about 168 hours," National Grid said.

During the three winter months from December to February, the Northport plant generated nearly double the power output that it had on average during the prior four years, National Grid said, while the Port Jefferson station generated 2.5 times the prior four-year average.

In all, its generation fleet produced 36% more energy this winter than the prior four-year average, the company said. (The E.F. Barrett plant in Island Park didn't show a similar "linear" increase, the company noted.) 

The higher use of older plants mirrors reports that those plants also saw inordinately high use during a heat spell in summer. In June, Newsday reported, the Northport power station had its highest use day ever.

Will Hazelip, president of National Grid Ventures, said the biggest plants began burning fuel oil at year’s end, when demand for natural gas for heating increased.

"We don’t typically burn oil in December," Hazelip said in an interview. "We got switched in December. LIPA makes the decision. We burned oil in December and quite a bit during the cold spells."

Newsday last week reported National Grid Ventures is considering the prospect of repowering the three big power plants, including construction of new, more efficient combined-cycle generating plants that could make the Island’s generation more fuel-efficient, and, the company said, less expensive at the wholesale level.

Newsday has previously reported "repowering" the units under a plan studied by LIPA in 2017 would have cost a combined $4 billion to $5 billion. At the time, LIPA decided that projected system-wide power reductions made the repowerings unnecessary.

But much has changed since then. Gov. Kathy Hochul has taken an "all-of-the-above" approach to a state energy plan that has evolved following Trump administration opposition to green-energy alternatives. The state has approved a natural-gas enhancement project for the downstate region, and has tapped the brakes on planned retirements of fossil-fuel plants, while entertaining new nuclear plants.

In an assessment of winter cold impacts last month, the New York Independent System Operator, which manages state power markets, noted that natural gas during the cold snap was "prioritized for residential and commercial heating," leaving power plants that rely on gas to face shortages when electric demand rises.

"The NYISO has reported that recent winters have required greater reliance on oil-fired and dual-fuel (gas and oil) generators, though oil inventories and fuel-switching capabilities are also under increased pressure," the agency said in an online blog.

Worse, NYISO said. "the snow and sustained cold combined to render solar production almost zero," with snow covering panels and the deep freeze precluding melting. Wind power contributed upward of 2,000 megawatts, however.

The problem is that traditional plants, many more than 50 years old, suffered breakdowns during the high-use period in the cold, NYISO said, noting between 1,200 megawatts and 3,000 megawatts of scheduled plant capacity were unavailable each day. And natural gas prices soared.

That led grid operators across the state to ask some of the biggest commercial users to curtail usage through demand-response programs, which were activated on six consecutive days during the winter storm in late January.

"Extreme cold events have increasingly exposed vulnerabilities in generator performance and fuel access, underscoring that reliability risks are not driven by capacity alone, but by whether resources can operate when winter conditions are most severe," NYISO concluded. "Recent operating characteristics have only heightened such concerns."

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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