SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Stuart Nachmias, president of New York Transco, said that New York’s plan to build as much as 1,000 miles of new transmission to accommodate renewables and meet its emission targets will be “a marathon, not a sprint.”
NY Transco, a joint venture of Consolidated Edison, Avangrid, National Grid and Central Hudson Gas & Electric, was formed to propose new transmission projects in response to FERC Order 1000 and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s New York Energy Highway initiative.
Speaking at the Independent Power Producers of New York’s fall conference, Nachmias noted that the Transmission Owner Transmission Solutions (TOTS) projects, completed in June to counter the potential loss of the Indian Point nuclear plant, were the first major projects built in the state since the 1980s.
NYISO is currently conducting a viability and sufficiency report on proposals submitted in response to the state Public Service Commission’s AC Transmission Upgrade proceeding. Those projects — the Edic-New Scotland and Knickerbocker-Pleasant Valley 345-kV lines — were slowed because they got caught in the transition to rules under FERC Order 1000, said Nachmias, also a vice president of energy policy and regulatory affairs for Consolidated Edison of New York.
In May, the ISO identified 10 proposed transmission projects as finalists to relieve congestion in western New York and connect wind and solar generation to load centers. The ISO acted in response to a 2015 PSC order that said relieving congestion in the Buffalo area would produce environmental and reliability benefits and satisfy a public policy requirement under Order 1000. (See NYISO Identifies 10 Public Policy Tx Projects.)
Nachmias said the ISO, which will ultimately select developers, is learning as it goes.
“The first couple of times it’s not going to be fast because the NYISO is doing this for the first time. They’ve never actually had to select a transmission developer before. So when they do it, they’re probably going to go a little more slowly than they otherwise could.”
Order 1000’s public policy requirement should make more projects possible, Nachmias said. “We had been trying to develop transmission based on economics alone for some time, and it was very difficult to justify.”
─ Rich Heidorn Jr.
Other IPPNY Fall Conference Coverage
