By William Opalka

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — New York Power Authority CEO Gil Quiniones says the state-run company will be the “most innovative and advanced utility in the U.S. in a very short period” due to massive investments and its commitment to facilitate the remaking of the industry in the state.

Addressing the fall conference of the Independent Power Producers of New York, Quiniones said NYPA expects to spend $3 billion to $4 billion on infrastructure over the next decade, with nearly half of that total — $1.5 billion — in smart grid generation and transmission assets.

New York has embarked on the Reforming the Energy Vision initiative to transition to cleaner and more distributed generation. NYPA’s five-year strategic plan was written in the context of REV, he said.

That means a revamping of operating procedures and technologies that can accommodate distributed resources. “As we move into this REV world, we have to be sure that all this generation and transmission infrastructure works in synchronicity with the advent of distributed resources,” Quiniones said. “… Our grid has to be connected and smart and optimized and the only way to do that is to digitize it and use big-data analytics.”

NYPA has 16 power plants and 1,400 circuit miles of transmission, including one-third of the state’s high voltage system. It serves 51 small municipal and rural cooperatives.

One project now underway is the retrofit of the Massena substation, which Quiniones said will result in “the most advanced substation of its size in this country. It will be microprocessor-based, fiber optic-based; it will provide unparalleled situational awareness and operational flexibility.”

Last year, NYPA built a 15-MW microgrid on Rikers Island in New York City, which captures waste heat from the facility and runs parallel and synchronous to the utility system. It can island in the event of another city-wide power interruption, such as during Superstorm Sandy. This is intended to be the first of several microgrids NYPA will build.

NYPA is acting as a facilitator with vendors SolarCity and SunEdison to install solar panels at the 698 school districts in the state. “I predict there will be a very fast ramp up of solar in our public schools,” Quiniones said.

In October, six drones from different vendors will be tested to monitor the condition of power lines. The authority also is beginning to monitor power line conditions and operations with a robotic device from Hydro-Quebec.

Much of the innovation is taking place in the North Country, home to most of the state’s wind farms, whose variability stresses the system.

Other initiatives include:

• Installing dynamic line rating technology sensors and intelligence so the system can know exactly how much power is being carried through its lines. This aids efficiency by acting as a “fast switch” as it can transfer as much as 300 MW from one line to another in milliseconds to prevent system overload;
• Condition-based monitoring that would base equipment replacement on the condition of the asset rather than on manufacturers’ recommendations;
• Transformer-testing software to prevent catastrophic events.