
How New York City Gets Its Electricity - Osiris30
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/10/nyregion/how-new-york-city-gets-its-electricity-power-grid.html?pagewanted=all&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
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jawns
One of the things you'll probably not notice about this article, although you
can be certain a lot of effort went into it, is the simplicity of language and
sentence structure.

The article describes a hugely complex network of technologies, and also
touches on how public policy shapes their use, and yet I bet that as you're
reading, you don't struggle at all with understanding what it's talking about.

The writer, Emily S. Rueb, uses short, straightforward sentences, paragraphs
of only a sentence or two, utility words instead of flowery language -- and
yet the writing doesn't seem at all unrefined. It just seems natural and to
the point. That's a real service to the reader, and a real show of talent by
the writer.

I guess, like the incredible infrastructure that goes into supplying power to
NYC, you know it's working well when you hardly notice it.

~~~
jjguy
To me, this principles of this style are best described in the Economist's
Style Guide:
[http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction](http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction)

"Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought. So think what you want
to say, then say it as simply as possible."

"Pomposity and long-windedness tend to obscure meaning, or reveal the lack of
it: strip them away in favour of plain words."

"Do your best to be lucid (“I see but one rule: to be clear”, Stendhal).
Simple sentences help. Keep complicated constructions and gimmicks to a
minimum"

"Long paragraphs, like long sentences, can confuse the reader. “The
paragraph”, according to Fowler, “is essentially a unit of thought, not of
length; it must be homogeneous in subject matter and sequential in
treatment.”"

"Get: _Get_ is an adaptable verb, but it has its limits. A man does not _get_
sacked or promoted, he _is_ sacked or promoted. Nor does a prize-winner _get
to_ shake hands with the president, or spend the money all at once; he _gets
the chance to_ , or _is able to_ , or _is allowed to_.

~~~
appleiigs
All of these suggestions apply to coding too!

I wish email writers would spend a bit more time on composition. I do realize
code lives a lot longer than an email does, but if they put in just a fraction
of the effort a programmer spends on structuring code, it would make email a
lot better.

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leroy_masochist
My first project as an investment banker was refinancing the turbine barges in
Brooklyn briefly mentioned at the beginning the article.

The article should have gone into capacity auctions. It's an interesting
process; generators participate in Dutch auctions to win contracts to be ready
to provide a certain number of MWs onto the grid. The entire winning side of
the market gets paid at the market-clearing price when the ISO gets enough MWs
allocated. The capacity is auctioned off over three time horizons: a "strip"
auction for the six-month winter period and the six-month summer period that
happens about a quarter before the period starts; a monthly auction that
clears a few months out; and a monthly auction that clears on the eve of the
start of the month.

I was initially surprised to learn that clearing bidders are not even paid to
generate; they're paid _to be ready_ to generate, which means they have to
stay inspection-compliant and periodically fire up the plant to ensure
everything's in good working order. If they generate, they get paid for the
MWs that go onto the grid.

For an asset like the Brooklyn barges, they might get spun up 20 days a year
on a hot year, and actually put meaningful MW's on the grid for 10 of those
days. All in July/August when it's hot out and people are blasting AC. The
capacity market is highly seasonal.

The NYISO website has lots of data if you want to learn more:
[http://www.nyiso.com/public/markets_operations/market_data/i...](http://www.nyiso.com/public/markets_operations/market_data/icap/index.jsp)

~~~
akiselev
Its not that surprising when you account for the fact that utilities are
government granted monopolies. In California, at least, the deal is that
investors get to be the only game in town and in return they guarantee that
the infrastructure _will not_ fail. Depending on the size of the market, a
power outage might cost the utility tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in
fines, all but wiping out any profit for the year. AFAIK there are also some
pretty hefty fines when the company fails to repair infrastructure fast
enough, like after a car accident damages the power lines.

With such crippling fines, its cheaper for utilities to build a huge natural
gas peaker plant every year than to get penalized for failing to provide
service.

------
msisk6
This is one of the better articles I've read about the grid.

I don't work in this region, but I work for another ISO that controls one of
the other grids doing a cross between DevOps and SRE on the systems that
directly control the grid.

I've worked for startups (including my own) and public cloud providers, but
this is the most stressful job I've had. If I fail people will quickly start
to die as traffic lights and life-support systems fail.

The article touches on the complexity a bit, but it's huge job controlling a
deregulated open-market energy grid. You have to scale for peak demand while
providing financial incentives to support a mix of generation with widely
varying prices. You have to deal with distribution congestion and natural
disasters. Even generation disruptions -- a 2-GW nuke plant can shutdown at
any moment. You need to deal with that deficit and quickly get something else
online to meet demand.

And it all has to work 24/7 without a second of interruption.

It's an eye-opening experience. I'll never complain about paying my electric
bill again. ;)

~~~
digler999
> as traffic lights and life-support systems fail.

Has anyone on life support _ever_ died from the power going out ? I've worked
at a hospital and the life support machines have internal battery backups,
they're plugged into a separate outlet that is (at least) got an instant-on
backup generator and possibly another battery backup. Plus, the ventilators I
saw have rubber balloons on them that can be manually squeezed to breathe the
patient if the machine dies. I also thought ventilated patients are also
staffed by critical care nurses that have at most 2 patients per nurse. I've
never heard of a ventilated patient set off in a room alone without adequate
supervision.

Not saying there's no risk elsewhere in a city from power loss, but I thought
hospitals had this situation covered.

~~~
berberous
Probably multiple in New Orleans during Katrina. Of course, that was more than
just a power outage, with flooding water destroying backup generators, more
critical needs patients than non-evacuated staff remaining to support them,
multiple days for support to arrive, etc.

~~~
slouch
This podcast contains a horrifying story about how life-supporting services
and resources were managed when one hospital in New Orleans lost power during
Katrina: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-
god/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-god/)

------
dantaylor08
What surprised me, is that 54% of the energy of NYC comes from what is
arguably clean energy, if you include nuclear in the mix. That's even more
impressive if you consider how long it's been since the nuclear power capacity
of NYC has expanded.

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unwind
Since it says that the biggest threat against the electrical supply system is
trees, shouldn't it be possible to design a drone-based automatic transmission
line inspection system?

I mean "just" have a drone with appropriate sensors fly the length of the
lines, looking for tree branches that are threatening. Perhaps using machine
vision, or something simpler like lidar/radar/ultrasonics/whatever. Signal
human inspectors when something looks fishy enough, with video attached for
quick review/triage.

Optimally designed to allow recharging the drone's batteries somehow from the
top of the pylons (aren't there electrical fields that might be used
somehow[1]?), to allow extended automated runs.

Obviously covered in rubber or something to make the chance of damaging the
infrastructure in case of a crash minimal.

Crazy?

[1] No idea if this is possible but it would be super neat since it might
allow it to scale to run on hundreds of miles of power lines without many
humans and with good coverage.

~~~
sschueller
Why not spend the money to bury the transmission lines? At least the small
ones.

~~~
giardini
As [http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/us/winter-storm-power-
lines/](http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/us/winter-storm-power-lines/) explains:

"underground power lines cost five to 10 times more than overhead wires, don't
last as long and cost more to replace..."

and

".... underground lines "are not without their disadvantages,... While more
reliable 'under normal weather conditions', they take almost 60% longer to fix
when something does happen to them."

~~~
jimktrains2
Wait, underground lines have a shorter life?

> "Buried power lines are protected from the wind, ice and tree damage that
> are common causes of outages, and so suffer fewer weather or vegetation-
> related outages," it concluded. "But buried lines are more vulnerable to
> flooding, and can still fail due to equipment issues or lightning."

Does flooding happen that often that it significantly decreases their life?

~~~
ssegraves
I worked on some small pieces of things mentioned in the article, specifically
around the maintenance and reliability of the underground network in
Manhattan.

There is a mix of submersible transformers and those that can handle water but
can't be submersed in the city. The former are usually placed in areas that
are prone to flooding, they are much more expensive than a regular transformer
since they are basically waterproof and have a number of extra features built
into them so they require less maintenance.

In Manhattan proper, the worst enemies of the underground network are salt +
water and the build up of gases. Salt and water + eletricity = corrosion which
leads to burnouts. There has been a significant move to try and preemptively
visit underground vaults and clear them of the salty water after a snow melt.

Most underground cabling is enclosed in an oil filled casing. Over time these
wear and leak. Those gases can fill the underground transformer vaults and
lead to explosions. These events are usually pretty well documented and again,
ConEdison has been putting procedures and inspection routines that help
prevent these.

What is amazing about the Manhattan and Brooklyn networks is how resilient
they are simply by the simplicity of design. A transformer outage in a certain
area can go almost completely unnoticed by citizens because of the control
centers around the city and how they will reroute power. It's something that
doesn't exist just about anywhere else and allows crews to isolate issues and
perform maintenance when needed.

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cwal37
If you want an extremely thorough look into the operation of New York State's
(including NYC of course) electricity market I would recommend the market
monitoring unit's State of the Market Report[1]. The deregulated markets have
a lot of quirks, but I think their operation and set of outcomes is pretty
interesting.

[1]
[http://www.nyiso.com/public/webdocs/markets_operations/docum...](http://www.nyiso.com/public/webdocs/markets_operations/documents/Studies_and_Reports/Reports/Market_Monitoring_Unit_Reports/2015/NYISO%202015%20SOM%20Report_5-23-2016-CORRECTED.pdf)

------
SonicSoul
if you like this, you may find this book interesting:

The Works: Anatomy of a City.

my GF got it for her post grad architecture degree and i found it really well
illustrated and interesting! For example it outlines the steam grid in NYC and
current vs historic uses

[https://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-City-Kate-
Ascher/dp/014...](https://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-City-Kate-
Ascher/dp/0143112708/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486738713&sr=8-2&keywords=how+city+works)

------
losteverything
I thought a part of Manhattan was still coal powered -

Some 20 years ago we took a behind the scenes tour of the museum of natural
history and saw huge "doors" where coal was dumped. Our insider said that the
museum borders on the 1/2 of the island still powered by coal. And that 1/2 if
the museum's property was still coal powered.

Btw - he also showed us the remains of the real Jumbo. Quite cool for a cub
scout parent.

~~~
leroy_masochist
There's very little remaining installed coal capacity in Zone J (within the
physical confines of NYC), and I believe all of it is dual-use, which these
days would be running exclusively on nat gas. However, some coal-generated
power from outside NYC does make its way consistently into the market.

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bradfa
The article says that 4 operating nuclear plants supply 1/3 of the electricity
for NY state. That's impressive!

Sadly, 4 of the NY nuclear plants were commissioned in the 1970s. A 5th plant,
in Shoreham, is the newest but is also no longer operating. Nine Mile Point
has one newer unit from the 1980s, but all told, most of the nuclear power
generation capacity in NY is 40+ years old.

~~~
cwal37
Shoreham is actually way more interesting and complicated than that. The plant
was never really in operation, but a deal was struck for it to briefly "turn
on" so that cost recovery could be triggered and passed on to the rate base.
It never entered real operation despite being completely finished.

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davidf18
I live in NYC, and an important technology used here not mentioned is
microturbines which can be used for co-generation and even try-generation. I
spoke with an engineer that converted a Columbia Univ building from #2 oil to
natural gas (Columbia is converting many/all buildings to natural gas) and
used a micro turbine for the electric. He claimed the cost of conversion was
$500K and the savings per year is $100K.

With tri-generation you get not only heat from steam and electric but also
chilled water AC.

Unfortunately, microturbines don't get the tax breaks that solar and wind
power gets.

During Hurricane Sandy we had a major power shortage below 42nd st (?) in
Manhattan and everything was black except the Goldman Sachs building. There is
a great magazine cover of Manhattan all dark except that one tower.

~~~
tricolon
Here's the New York Magazine cover: [http://nymag.com/nymag/letters/hurricane-
sandy-editors-lette...](http://nymag.com/nymag/letters/hurricane-sandy-
editors-letter-2012-11/)

I'm pretty sure the blackout was everything below 23rd St (except Battery Park
City) on the west side and below 40th St on the east side.

~~~
epc
39th Street was the cutoff between the 14th St grid and uptown. The huge co-op
development in West Chelsea between 23rd and Penn Station has its own
generators, but the rest of the area was blacked out.

-signed, was w/o power for 4 weeks in West Chelsea

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epistasis
I have to wonder how long it will be until it's economical to use lithium ion
batteries located in NYC to do electricity arbitrage. If natural gas turbines
on barges are used, it can't be too long...

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CodeSheikh
This explains why ConEd bill always has higher "delivery" charges in NYC per
unit than actual consumption.

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kristofferR
> "Although energy use is projected to flatten or decrease in the next decade"

This is a digression, but this has always bugged me in the Kardashev scale.
Why would more advanced civilizations use so much power?

