Sea Cliff, East Hills join opposition to Propel NY Energy project

Two North Shore villages joined with community and business groups Friday in requesting the state deny or dismiss the case for a major power line cable from western Long Island to Westchester, raising questions about whether the Propel NY Energy project is necessary.

The papers filed with the state Public Service Commission late Friday cite recent testimony in an unrelated LIPA federal complaint that may cast doubt on the stated viability of the $3.26 billion project. Among other things, according to the filing, that testimony states that Propel "does not provide meaningful access to additional upstate or broader regional capacity, and may shift downstate constraints rather than eliminate them."

Newsday first reported on that LIPA filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, earlier this month. 

The request for dismissal or denial of Propel’s state request for a permit for the project was filed by the Villages of Sea Cliff and East Hills, a property owners’ association and a roster of local residents.

Their filing follows a similar request for dismissal by the North Shore, Roslyn and Syosset school districts on separate grounds.

The latest request for a dismissal notes that Propel’s end point in Westchester falls short of a known power bottleneck, raising doubts about its much-touted ability to relieve constraints between the upstate and downstate power grids.

Testimony by PSEG Long Island senior director Lucyna Khazanovich explained that "the UPNY-CONED interface limits power flowing from upstate into downstate New York and that [Propel]’s Westchester point of interconnection lies south of that bottleneck," according to the newly filed motion. Propel "therefore does not cross or remove the constraint that limits additional upstate generation from reaching the downstate system."

Because much of the wind-power upon which Propel was originally premised has been canceled or withdrawn by the state, the new cable "cannot replace the generation underlying its original selection premise or overcome the UPNY-CONED constraint identified in LIPA's sworn technical evidence," the filing by the villages said.

The original plan for Propel was to supply a transmission need identified by the PSC to deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind from Long Island to the upstate grid. Two offshore wind projects remain under construction but plans for up to five others were canceled in 2025 and this year after the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw all new project permits while buying up lease areas for billions of dollars.

Propel’s developers at the New York Power Authority and New York Transco have said the project is needed for grid reliability and resilience at a time of increased power demand and projected shortfalls. They say that rather than a wind-farm cable, Propel is "power agnostic," able to transmit power bidirectionally to and from upstate to where power is needed.

But the developers to date have failed to provide a list of power generators with excess capacity to transmit via Propel, as Newsday has requested, and major state-owned hydroelectric generators have constraints precluding the transmission of their power to the LIPA grid.

"If the applicants now rely on a generation-neutral reliability purpose, they must identify and quantify the specific need, establish how [Propel] will satisfy it despite the stated physical constraints, and demonstrate through the record why this selected facility remains the necessary or appropriate solution," the filing by the villages said.

Propel’s developers downplayed the villages’ Friday motion to dismiss, saying the PSC already has years of testimony and documentation to make its decision.

“The record before the PSC is the result of a comprehensive, multi-year initiative that included extensive public outreach and a settlement process,” NYPA spokeswoman Susan Craig said in an email, adding that “without Propel, emergency operations, blackouts and brownouts could become common."

Kim Mashke, a spokeswoman for the PSC and its administrative arm, the Department of Public Service, in previous responses to Newsday following revelations of the LIPA/PSEG testimony, said that even though other wind-projects have been canceled, Propel "would still support wind."

She referred to the Sunrise Wind project with a projected 924 megawatts of power expected to be delivered to the Long Island grid next year at Holtsville. She said Sunrise is "consistent with the original" PSC order, known as a Public Policy Transmission Need" identifying a need for the cable given the anticipated onslaught of offshore wind expected by 2030.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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