Energy News Beat
ENB Pub Note: This is a great post on LinkedIn from Doug Sheridan, and we highly recommend following him.
The FT reports that NY is confronting a tightening electricity supply just as demand begins to rise after a decade of stagnation. For years, NY expected electricity demand to remain flat, helped by efficiency gains. Regulators blocked proposals to modernize gas‑fired plants that supply most of NYC’s power, assuming offshore wind and other renewables would replace them.
That outlook has shifted sharply. AI data centers and new manufacturing projects now seeking grid connections by 2030 represent load growth equivalent to NYC entire peak demand. Meeting it will require billions in investment, much of it borne by utility customers.
National Grid, which has a larger footprint in New York than in the UK, is upgrading the upstate grid to handle more severe weather and additional power flows. Demand is rising “much faster and more significantly than anticipated,” according to Sally Librera, president of National Grid NY.
The state’s grid operator compares the coming overhaul to the upheaval of 1882, when Thomas Edison opened Manhattan’s Pearl Street Station.
Some of the new demand reflects industrial expansion, including Micron Technology’s planned $100 billion semiconductor plant near Syracuse. Upstate power is largely supplied by hydroelectric and nuclear generation, and a new transmission line now carries renewable electricity from Quebec to New York City.
FT rightly points out that the southern half of the state remains dependent on fossil fuels, and energy politics are increasingly contentious. A quarter of NY’s power plants are more than 50 years old, leaving little margin during heat waves or winter storms.
National Grid plans £17 billion in New York investment over five years, but rising costs and debates over who should pay—utilities, ratepayers, or data‑center developers—remain unresolved.
Our Take 1: NY is now paying the price for its prior dismissals of the importance of 24/7 dispatchable power, manifested as ill-considered bans on fracking—the state has large deposits of shale gas—along with effective bans on pipelines to deliver natural gas from Pennsylvania and other states in the region, as well as closure of the Indian Point nuclear facility in 2021.
Our Take 2: NY isn’t the only state to find itself increasingly dependent on aging fossil fuel generating plants. Market-distorting subsidies and political favoritism toward wind and solar has forced Texas, Oklahoma, California and others to lean heavily on aging fossil-fuel infrastructure, as new gas-fired generation is hesitant to build on systems in which the deck is stacked against them in favor of intermittent wind and solar.
Our Take 3: We’ll say it again—politicians have broken America’s grids. The only way the 24/7 generation that the country needs gets built on grids is if power prices rise to the point to compensate generators for being subject to today’s terrible energy policy and politics.
The post Politicians have broken America’s grids – And Consumers pay the price – Through the nose appeared first on Energy News Beat.
