339-mile subterranean transmission line<\/a> that links the Big Apple to hydropower plants in Quebec, has been touted as a lifeline for New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul called it a \u201cgame changer\u201d and said it could meet 20% of New York City\u2019s energy needs while helping to cut carbon emissions.<\/p>\nBut that assumes energy is flowing continuously, at full blast. In August, the transmission line was operating far below full capacity, according to the state grid operator\u2019s records and energy analysts.<\/p>\n
Robert McCullough, an energy expert who analyzed the deliveries, found that in August the transmission line was operating, on average, at 24% capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201dIt’s time for a thorough review of this contract and the expectations over the next six months, because not only does it look like New Yorkers are not getting what they were promised, but they’re likely to get considerably less,\u201d said McCullough, principal at McCullough Research.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s contract with Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec, the Canadian company supplying the power along CHPE, doesn\u2019t specify how much energy will be delivered and when.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no requirement in the contract for Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec to provide continuous power on a daily basis,\u201d said Deanne Cohen, a spokesperson for the state.<\/p>\n
Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec told Gothamist that it concentrates its deliveries to New York City during periods of higher demand, such as heat waves.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than maximizing flows during lower-value periods, such as overnight hours when demand is typically lower, we are prioritizing deliveries during periods when the environmental and economic benefits to New York are greatest,\u201d said Lynn St-Laurent, a spokesperson for the company.<\/p>\n
But an analysis by Ken Girardin, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, found that power flow didn\u2019t always line up with peak demand.<\/p>\n
Girardin noted instances when CHPE\u2019s energy was flowing during lower times of electricity demand, but not during some hotter periods of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo idea what cutoff they’re using, but 1 p.m. on a humid August afternoon seems like a weird time to turn off CHPE,\u201d Girardin said.<\/p>\n
His conclusion was that CHPE is not operating like a dependable energy source.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you come back to the question of how this was sold to the public and what the supposed environmental benefits were going to be, there’s a big gap between how CHPE is performing and how it was sold,\u201d Girardin said. \u201cThe state has not been clear about why or when CHPE is being used to deliver power into the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
During its first month of full operation in July, power stopped flowing<\/a> for most of the month because of two outages. The first was the result of an unspecified technical issue on the Canadian side that stopped flow on July 1. About two days later, power went down again because of a damaged section of underground cable on the New York side that took about 10 days to troubleshoot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s $6 billion power line from Canada was supposed to bring enough energy to power one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-337423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}