Power lines and substations built generations ago across New York are being asked to carry more electricity than ever before, prompting National Grid to undertake a massive, multiyear effort to rebuild aging infrastructure before demand outpaces it.<\/p>\n
“Within upstate New York, we have some of the oldest electrical infrastructure in the country,” said Matt Barnett, chief operating officer for National Grid Electric New York. “A good majority of these towers are approaching 70, 80, 90 years old on average, and obviously at some point, they reach the end of their useful life. We need to go through and replace them.”<\/p>\n
The work isn’t cheap, and it’s part of why utility rates are higher. But the company argues it’s an investment that will pay off over time through fewer outages, fewer emergency repairs and a system that costs less to run.<\/p>\n
“The delivery rates should even out, or even lower in some cases, because the system is running more reliably and more efficiently,” said Patrick Stella, a spokesperson for National Grid.<\/p>\n
The upgrades start with power lines. Crews are in the process of rebuilding transmission towers and raising the voltage capacity of the lines that run through them.<\/p>\n
“When this line is rebuilt, we’re raising the voltage from 69,000 volts to 115,000 volts,” Barnett said. “When it operates at that higher voltage, that’s what creates more capacity for more generation and more load to come online.”<\/p>\n
From there, the upgraded power moves through substations, which are built to deliver electricity to homes and businesses.<\/p>\n
“This whole yard was rebuilt. We tore this whole thing down,” said Jeff Ricciardi, manager of the substation department. “Here’s an example of the old equipment that came out, an old late-1960s circuit breaker. You can just look and see how old and rusted the equipment looks. You can see the need for an upgrade.”<\/p>\n
Part of the challenge National Grid faces involves where power is coming from. Instead of relying on a handful of large plants, the grid now must connect numerous smaller power sources scattered across the state.<\/p>\n
“Electricity use is going up across the state; we all hear about that,” Stella said. “What we need to do is improve the backbone of the system, the transmission system, in order to accommodate more electricity coming in \u2014 that could be through solar, wind or nuclear. We have to be ready for it. Power is so much more critical than it’s ever been. We want to make sure it’s as reliable as possible.”<\/p>\n
The projects still have several years to go, and similar work is underway across the state as National Grid prepares the grid for the amount of energy New York is expected to use in the years ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Power lines and substations built generations ago across New York are being asked to carry more electricity than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21249],"tags":[34177,41141,41140,41142,41139,2580,18,41143,1426,34174],"class_list":["post-97076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-national-grid","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-albany-county","tag-app-local-business","tag-central-ny","tag-hudson-valley","tag-national-grid","tag-news","tag-noah-love","tag-technology","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117037030596418198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}