EPRI is Climate READi

EPRI in April 2022, in response to the need to prepare the power system against the effects of climate change, launched the Climate REsilience and ADaptation initiative or Climate READi for short. It requires unprecedented collaboration, so taking part in that initiative is the New York Power Authority, which is leading the way to a clean New York energy future.

NYPA is one of the utilities that joined the growing group of Climate READi trailblazers that will leverage decades of research by EPRI, U.S. National Research Laboratories, the DOE, academic institutions, and others to create a comprehensive, industry-accepted framework to guide electricity system adaptation and resilience decisions and investments. It is important work.

Public Utilities Fortnightly sat down with NYPA's leader, Justin Driscoll, to find out about where this important utility and program are going together. Listen in as he explains their journey.
 

PUF's Steve Mitnick: Why have you become actively involved in Climate READi?

Justin Driscoll: NYPA has an important clean-energy role to play in New York State; we provide about twenty-five percent of the electricity that is consumed in the state on any given day.

Justin Driscoll: The way that we will pitch in and help drive results of Climate READi is by dedicating resources from our various groups, whether it’s our sustainability team here at NYPA or our hydrologists or asset management folks.

Also, when it comes to high-voltage transmission, we are one of the largest owners and operators of the bulk transmission system. We like to view ourselves as the backbone of the grid in New York.

So, it is critical for us to be thinking long term about how we protect, and hopefully increase the output of our facilities. It's critical we have a long-range view as to what adaptation steps we should be thinking about taking long term to make sure we can maximize the benefits we provide to the residents of New York State, and at the same time protect those assets from climate change.

PUF: Not all the readers across North America know as much about the important role of NYPA and your scale, which is big. Fill in about that transmission backbone, the tremendous generation capabilities you've had historically and presently, and a number of projects underway.

Justin Driscoll: On the generation side, we're primarily a hydroelectric generator. We have two large hydro facilities, one near Niagara Falls in western New York, and one in the north country right on the Canadian border. We share operation of that facility with Canada.

Those plants are our largest assets. We also have a more than one thousand-megawatt pump storage facility in the Catskill Mountains called Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Plant. It is really a large battery that is relied on heavily by the New York Independent System Operator.

On the transmission side we have an east-west high-voltage transmission line, as well as a north-south line that comes down from that plant that I mentioned in the New York's north country.

The idea is, of course, to move that generation down to the load centers where the energy is most needed. That's a critical role that we play at NYPA.

We have sixteen generating facilities, and we own and operate about fourteen hundred miles of the high-voltage transmission system from two hundred thirty kilovolts and above, and we have a seven hundred sixty-five kilovolts line as well.

PUF: Going back to Climate READi, what are the most important potential benefits of the work they're doing over the next three years to the New York Power Authority and New York State that you would be hoping for and expecting?

Justin Driscoll: I think the idea behind Climate READi is to advise the industry on the planning, design, and operation of the energy delivery system and to make it more resilient for the future.

From a state perspective, Climate READi could inform generation siting decisions that the state might make. It also will inform the kind of upgrades and improvements that are going to be required of generating facilities if you take into consideration the long-term effects of climate change and some of the adaptation measures that utilities will have to take.

From a regulatory standpoint, we need to be able to forecast the extent to which improvements or upgrades to the energy delivery system are going to be necessary given climate change and how those ultimately get paid for by ratepayers. I think that'll be a key benefit that NYPA and the state will receive as a result of the work of Climate READi.

PUF: Talk about NYPA's innovation approach and how with Climate READi you'll more actively participate in research and testing with EPRI.

Justin Driscoll: We do have a significant research and development function here. We've historically worked closely with EPRI and with several of the national labs. In fact, we just completed an adaptation study with the Argonne National Lab that looked at our facilities around the state.

But I think the way that we will pitch in and help drive results of Climate READi is by dedicating resources from our various groups, whether it's our sustainability team here at NYPA or our hydrologists or asset management folks.

We are informing the team about some of the risk and resilience work that we're doing internally to make sure that we're planning for some of the potential long-term risks that our plants or our facilities might be facing. 

So, it is certainly sharing the work that has already been done here with the Climate READi team, and of course, being part of the discussions. Our team was just out in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the Climate READi kickoff workshop, so we're already fully engaged.

PUF: What areas of the Climate READi research have come to most interest you personally?

Justin Driscoll: Just given the location of many of our assets, our generation resources are largely in areas that are located in close proximity to the shoreline. Any learning and any information we can receive about projections around sea level rise are critical for us.

We have eleven peaker plants in New York City, most of which are located right on the water around the metropolitan area. We also have a five-hundred-megawatt natural gas plant in Astoria Queens that sits on the water. 

These are critical assets that someday might be used for storage or even locating offshore wind interconnections.

These facilities have to be preserved for the long-term, and we want to preserve our investment in these areas. So, we are thinking about making sure that they are not susceptible to sea level rise, and at the same time we need to prepare them for the future clean-energy economy that we're going to see down the road when these plants will be fully offline.

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act will be looking for other uses for those critical locations with that energy infrastructure. We are doing everything we can to benefit from the learnings of Climate READi to inform our decisions around these plants and around all our generation and transmission assets.

Lead image: NYPA CEO Justin Driscoll with the 20th President of SUNY, Albany Havidán Rodriguez, on top of a solar project.