Before Hurricane Sandy, No Advocate For New York's Utility Ratepayers

Matt Sledge

Huffington Post

Posted: 11/28/2012

NEW YORK -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation two weeks ago into utility companies' performance before and after Hurricane Sandy left millions of New Yorkers powerless -- some for weeks.

But one issue that could be crucial to Cuomo's special commission review is why there is no independent voice in New York state to stand up for electricity ratepayers before storms hit.

Last March, Cuomo rolled the state's independent Consumer Protection Board's Utility Intervention Unit into the Department of State. The unit now has a bare-bones staff with no authority to sue on behalf of ordinary customers. The governor's administration also has yet to issue a contract for independent utility watchdog and non-profit the Public Utility Law Project -- despite appropriations by the state legislature.

Across the Hudson, even though its population is a fraction of New York state's, New Jersey has a Division of Rate Counsel with dozens of employees on guard against jacked-up rates and lowballed tree-trimming budgets. It also can take utilities to court if it needs to.

"Right now as it stands, we have a diminished consumer protection representation," said New York Assembly Energy Committee Chair Kevin Cahill. "It's a serious, serious issue."

Utilities are claiming a staggering $1.5 billion in damages from Hurricane Sandy. If companies like Con Edison argue -- as they likely will -- that consumers should be forced to pay for most of that, there is no one with the technical knowledge necessary to find out what is warranted and what is not.

The lack of consumer protection also means that before Sandy, nobody was looking into whether ConEd was spending enough on maintenance and infrastructure investments, aside from the state regulator, the Public Service Commission.

New York's Utility Intervention Unit has just two employees, according to Cahill. And at a hearing earlier this year, when he asked about its jurisdiction since it had been rolled into the Department of State, he said, nobody seemed to know.

The governor's office and the Utility Intervention Unit did not respond to requests for comment.

Gerald Norlander, the executive director of PULP, said the state now appears to belatedly be moving to approve his outfit's contract. But he also sees a need for a strengthened, politically independent state utility intervention body.

"Under Pataki and Spitzer and Paterson and Cuomo -- it's not just Cuomo -- it's withered for 15 years," Norlander said of the unit. "They don't have the structural power and the independence they should have."

Having a voice independent from the regulator is critical, said Paul Flanagan, the litigation manager for the comparatively well-staffed and well-defined Division of Rate Counsel in New Jersey.

"We tend to be more the adversaries of the utilities, more so than the (regulator's) staff," he said.

An independent advocate can look out for customers before a disaster like Sandy strikes. It was the Division of Rate Counsel that filed a request in July with New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities to require one of the state's leading utilities, Jersey Central Power & Light, to explain how it was spending its storm mitigation money.

"As the utilities come in, which some of them already have and some of them will, to look for monies to pay for the storm … we look at the cost of things in particular, so we want to see whether the ratepayers are getting value for the money that is spent," said Flanagan.

Many other states have a similar ratepayers' advocate, usually funded by the utilities themselves in a way that amounts to pennies per consumer per year. There is even a National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. But New York is missing out.

"One of the problems with the rate-making structure in New York is that utilities can basically submit the bill for their response to storm damage, and it's pretty much passed through to the consumer," said Cahill.

But in many cases, he argued, utilities should have been spending more before the storm, to make outages less likely and shorter. Instead, he said, they have cut back on tree-trimming that can prevent downed lines, upgrading infrastructure, and hiring the lineworkers necessary to keep systems in shape.

"The question from a consumer representation standpoint at the current moment is, should the ratepayers in any way, shape, or form, be saddled with the costs of recovery where those costs could have been avoided with proper preparation?" he asked. "My answer to that is 'no'."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/hurricane-sandy-utility-ratepayers_n_2207285.html

New York tells Con Ed to prepare in case Indian Point shuts

Wed Nov 28, 2012 3:02pm EST

* New York governor wants Indian Point shut

* Entergy wants to run reactors for 20 more years

* Indian Point current licenses expire in 2013, 2015

By Scott DiSavino

Nov 28 (Reuters) - New York energy regulators told power companies in New York City to develop plans to keep the lights on in the Big Apple in case the giant Indian Point nuclear power plant, which supplies about a quarter of the city's electricity, is forced to shut down.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants the two reactors at Indian Point shut when their operating licenses expire in 2013 and 2015 in part because the nuclear plant is located in the New York metropolitan area, home to some 19 million people.

The governor has said even the most unlikely possibility of an accident is too much in the heavily populated area.

U.S. power company Entergy Corp, which owns Indian Point, says, however, the plant is safe, and the company is seeking to extend the reactors' licenses for another 20 years.

The 2,063-megawatt (MW) Indian Point plant is about 40 miles (60 km) north of Manhattan along the Hudson River.

"Entergy and its employees continuously demonstrate the plants are safely operated, and is committed to safely operating this important facility for many more years to come," Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi told Reuters Wednesday in an email.

On Tuesday, the state's energy regulator, New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC), directed New York City power company Consolidated Edison Inc to work with the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop a contingency plan to address the needs that would arise in the event Indian Point shuts down.

NYPA is a state-owned power generator that supplies electricity to government customers in New York City, including schools, hospitals, government buildings, subways and commuter trains.

"We will comply with the Commission's directive to work with the New York Power Authority to develop a contingency plan addressing the needs that would arise in the event of an Indian Point shutdown," Con Edison told Reuters in an emailed statement.

A shutdown of Indian Point, without sufficient alternatives, would threaten electric system reliability and potentially raise electric market prices, Con Ed said.

Several energy companies have already proposed power plants and transmission lines that could partially replace Indian Point, including units of NRG Energy Inc, Brookfield Asset Management Inc, BP Plc, Calpine Corp , GenOn Energy Inc and Iberdrola SA.

ENTERGY SEEKS NEW LICENSES

To keep the reactors running over the next couple of decades, Entergy filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2007 to renew the Indian Point licenses.

A decision by the NRC commissioners on the licenses might not happen for years, as agency judges are still holding hearings on challenges to the plant's continued operation.

Entergy, however, can continue to operate the reactors even after their licenses expire so long as the federal renewal process is ongoing.

The three judges at the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), which serves as the agency's judicial arm, started evidentiary hearings near the plant in October to consider 10 complaints raised by New York State and two public interest groups, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc and Riverkeeper Inc.

The NRC has scheduled several days of hearings through at least mid-December. On Wednesday, the NRC said it did not know when, or if, a second round of hearings would be scheduled and that a decision on the challenges would likely come months after the hearings are done.

SANDY PROMPTS ACTION

The contingency plan for Indian Point was one of Governor Cuomo's Energy Highway Blueprint proposals issued by a task force in October.

Cuomo proposed the Energy Highway plan in January to modernize the state's energy infrastructure.

The state's Public Service Commission said it decided to move forward this week on three proposals in the Energy Highway Blueprint, including the Indian Point proposal, because of Superstorm Sandy.

Sandy caused billions of dollars of damage and left millions of New Yorkers in the dark - some for more than two weeks - after striking the U.S. East Coast in late October.

The other Blueprint recommendations the Public Service Commission said it has decided move forward on now are proposals to build over 1,000 MW of new transmission capacity between upstate New York and New York City, at an estimated cost of $1 billion, and proposals to expand the state's use of natural gas by residential and business customers.

One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes in New York.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/utilities-entergy-indianpoint-idUSL1E8MS77020121128

Hurricane Power Outages After Sandy Not Extraordinary, According To Report Analyzing Katrina, Past Storms

By JONATHAN FAHEY 11/16/12 

AP

NEW YORK -- As the number of nights without power stretched on for thousands left in the dark after Superstorm Sandy, patience understandably turned to anger and outrage.

But an Associated Press analysis of outage times from other big hurricanes and tropical storms suggests that, on the whole, the response to Sandy by utility companies, especially in hardest-hit New York and New Jersey, was typical – or even a little faster than elsewhere after other huge storms.

The AP, with the assistance of Ventyx, a software company that helps utilities manage their grids, used U.S. Energy Department data to determine how many days it took to restore 95 percent of the peak number of customers left without power after major hurricanes since 2004, including Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Ike and Irene.

After Sandy, New York utilities restored power to at least 95 percent of customers 13 days after the peak number of outages was reported. New Jersey reached that same level in 11 days and West Virginia in 10 days.

Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 and Ike in 2008 all resulted in longer outages for customers in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Florida.

The longest stretch to 95 percent restoration since 2004 was Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, where local utilities had power restored to only three-quarters of their customers after 23 days before Hurricane Rita hit and caused additional outages.

Rita left Texas customers in the dark for 16 days; Katrina knocked out power to Mississippi customers for 15 days; Wilma and Ike knocked Florida and Texas out for 14 days each before power was restored to 95 percent of those who lost it, according to the federal data.

New York and New Jersey recovered far faster after last year's Hurricane Irene. It took seven days for New York to restore 95 percent of customers and six days for New Jersey. But the number of outages in each state was less than half than from Sandy.

The restoration target of 95 percent allowed the AP to compare responses to the largest number of recent storms using Energy Department data, and is considered by industry experts to provide a meaningful picture of the speed with which utilities restored service to the vast majority of customers.

A week or two without power is, without question, a difficult and frustrating hardship. There's the spoiled food in the fridge and the dark nights. There's the fire danger from relying on candles. No electricity also can mean no heat. In tall apartment buildings, it means no elevator service, a serious problem for the infirm or elderly who can't navigate stairs. For those who rely on mobile phones for communication, it means no way to charge phones – and therefore no way to communicate with loved ones or emergency services.

Michael Redpath of Toms River, N.J. was without power for 15 days before getting it back this week. He and his wife stayed in their home for the first week after Sandy because their friends also had lost power. As some power in the region was restored, and Redpath's wife got sick from too many nights in the cold, they started staying over with friends.

"It's just so disorienting to be without power, to be out of your house and to not know what's going on," he says.

Determining the quality of a utility's restoration efforts after an outage is difficult to do, experts say. That's because every storm generates a unique cocktail of mayhem that differs from location to location.

Just because New York and New Jersey utilities restored power in a range that is normal by historical standards does not prove that all of the utilities in the region performed equally well, or that they performed better or worse than their peers responding to outages in other states, or that there isn't plenty of room for improvement.

Frustrated residents, business owners and state and local officials lashed out at their electric utilities. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York formed a commission to investigate the responses of utilities in his state, and the operations chief of one utility, the Long Island Power Authority, resigned.

Cuomo called LIPA "beyond repair" and also expressed frustration with the performance of Consolidated Edison, the electric utility for New York City and Westchester County to the north.

Also, a positive general performance doesn't create any goodwill for those still suffering.

Sam Kusack, who owns an architectural metal fabrication shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was still without power Thursday, 17 days after going dark. Red Hook is in an isolated section of Brooklyn, and Con Edison only began laying new underground wires near his shop this week.

Workers told him power would be back by Friday, but, Kusack said, the utility had called him several times in the early days of the crisis to say his power would soon be restored. Those calls stopped long ago, and Kusack has continued to rely on a generator that gobbles expensive diesel fuel.

"It was a big storm, but it's been a while," he said. "It's tough to run a company on a generator, with no power. I have 25 employees, and a payroll to meet."

The fact that it has taken utilities roughly the same amount of time to restore the vast majority of customers as after similar-sized storms suggests that restoring power after an enormous weather event is simply a long, difficult process.

"The work is no magic, it's hard, grueling work," says Arshad Mansoor of the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry-funded technology research group.

Sandy's most prominent feature was its enormous footprint and record number of outages. All told, Sandy caused 8.5 million power outages across 21 states, the highest outage total ever.

The Edison Electric Institute, an industry group, estimates 67,000 workers from utilities and other firms in several states worked to restore power, but they faced a huge volume of work. For example, New Jersey's biggest utility, Public Service Electric & Gas, had to cut down 41,000 trees, replace 2,500 poles and install 1,000 new transformers. At its peak, 77 percent of PSE&G'S 2.2 million customers lost power.

Sandy also dumped 2-to-3 feet of snow in West Virginia, knocking power out to a quarter of that state's customers. And efforts to restore power along coastal properties were complicated by a storm surge that flooded dozens of substations on Long Island, in New York City and in New Jersey. For example, a storm surge and subsequent explosion at a substation on the East Side of Manhattan plunged the lower third of that borough into darkness.

Equipment in all of those substations had to be cleaned or replaced before the substations could be re-energized. Only then could utilities see if the lines between each substation and the thousands of customers each one serves also had to be repaired.

Utilities first fix problems that affect the largest number of customers, then work their way down to smaller problems affecting handfuls of customers. With Sandy and other big storms there are also thousands of customers who cannot get power because their homes are damaged and it is not possible or safe for the utility to restore power.

This restoration approach is reasonable, experts say, but it leads to intense frustration when those last few in the dark see their neighbors back to normal. Customers are generally understanding for two days without power, utility officials say. Then they are not.

Those last few homes and businesses, such as Kusack's firm, are often the hardest to restore; on many occasions, the days turn into weeks. After Con Edison restored power to nearly all of its customers 10 days after the storm, it said it was facing 3,600 restoration jobs in Westchester County that involved 11 or fewer customers each. LIPA said midday Thursday that 2,942 customers were still without power, not including those in flooded areas who cannot receive power until their own equipment is repaired and certified.

This is all part of a utility's job, of course. Delivering power reliably is the single most important task for an electric utility. Without question, some do a better job of planning, managing logistics and communication with customers and local officials than others.

"Not every utility is the same, not every utility is in the same state of readiness," says David Wright, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

EPRI's Mansoor said one indication that planning in the region affected by Sandy was good is that utilities did not run low on workers, poles, transformers, or other supplies. "Crews were available, spare parts were available," he said. "That was not an issue in this recovery."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has defended the response of the utilities in his state, and perhaps for good reason. Sixty-five percent of New Jersey utility customers lost power, 2.6 million homes and businesses. Compared with other big storms, New Jersey's utilities restored power to most customers in the shortest amount of time for a state with such a high percentage of outages.

A common complaint from residents throughout the region: The lack of accurate communication about when power would be restored.

Redpath, who is served by Jersey Central Power & Light, said he understands that the restoration job was enormous and would have understood if it took utilities three or four weeks to restore power. But for an entire week he was told almost daily that power would be restored the next day. He said he just happened to discover the power had finally been restored when he noticed the lights were on his neighbor's porch while driving by.

"I think (JCP&L) did a phenomenal job of marshaling resources, and the people on the ground did a phenomenal job," he said. "The problem was a combination of misinformation and no information. We would have managed differently if we knew what to expect."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/hurricane-power-outages-after-sandy_n_2146393.html

Suffering on L.I. as Power Agency Shows Its Flaw

By DANNY HAKIM, PATRICK McGEEHAN and MICHAEL MOSS

New York Times

11/13/12

It was four days before Hurricane Sandy would arrive, and trustees of the Long Island Power Authority gathered as forecasters’ warnings grew dire. For more than two hours, the trustees talked about a range of issues, including a proposal to hire a branding consultant.

But discussion of the storm lasted just 39 seconds.

The trustees’ approach toward the looming disaster reflects deep-rooted problems at the authority that have hobbled its response, causing hardship for hundreds of thousands of its customers, according to an examination of its performance by The New York Times. The bungling of the storm has called into question the authority’s very future.

The examination by The Times shows that the Long Island Power Authority has repeatedly failed to plan for extreme weather, despite extensive warnings by government investigators and outside monitors. In fact, before Hurricane Sandy, the authority was significantly behind on perhaps the most basic step to prepare for storms — trimming trees that can bring down power lines.

Customers have been exasperated not only by a lack of power, but also by the authority’s inability to communicate basic information. Long Islanders have recounted tales of phones unanswered at authority offices, of wildly inaccurate service maps and of broken promises to dispatch repair crews.

Of course, the storm was highly unusual, and utilities across the Northeast have come under criticism for delays in restoring power. The authority said it was “on plan” to restore power.

Still, the recovery has been slowest on Long Island, where roughly 90 percent of the authority’s 1.1 million customers lost power. As of Tuesday, more than 10,000 customers were still in the dark.

“Resources came late,” said Frank P. Petrone, chief executive of the Town of Huntington and a former official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When they came, there was no management to utilize those resources effectively. And it took 10 days for them to get their act together.”

Senior officials, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, have excoriated the authority, but in the past, they have paid little attention to its management.

The authority has not had a permanent chief executive for two years. Five spots on the 15-member board are vacant, 3 of which are Mr. Cuomo’s to fill.

The authority’s chairman, Howard E. Steinberg, has stayed on past an expired term. He was originally appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki, who left office almost six years ago.

Trying to fend off attacks on his oversight of the Long Island Power Authority, Mr. Cuomo on Tuesday established a high-level panel, called a Moreland Commission, to investigate how utilities across New York, including the authority, handled Hurricane Sandy and other storms.

He also revived a proposal that he made in his 2010 campaign to combine the authority with other state energy agencies, but has not ruled out privatizing the authority.

“I don’t believe you can fix it,” he said. “I believe it has to be overhauled and you need a new system.”

Also on Tuesday, the authority’s acting chief executive, Michael D. Hervey, announced his resignation effective at the end of the year.

The authority’s chairman, Mr. Steinberg, said the trustees spent only 39 seconds discussing the storm at the meeting because the board was confident that a plan was in place. He noted that the trustees were not utility professionals, but rather “an oversight board of citizens.”

“At that point, a few days before, there is nothing the board can do one way or another,” he said.

In many ways, the Long Island Power Authority, known as LIPA, reflects the shortcomings of the state’s quasi-independent public authorities, which are often criticized as a shadow government that resists scrutiny. Long Island is the only region of New York where the main electrical utility is run by the government.

While oversight has drifted, politicians have installed relatives and friends in executive positions at the authority, turning it into a rich source of patronage jobs, according to interviews and a review of state records.

These positions have an average salary of $110,000, the records show.

“There are many, many people who have been placed at LIPA during my tenure here who have no utility experience or training in the job that they have been placed in,” said Tracy Burgess-Levy, the authority’s director of community relations.

“Quite frankly, I think that’s a far bigger issue,” she said.

Ms. Burgess-Levy is herself married to a former congressman, David A. Levy, though she said she had extensive utility experience, having worked for the authority or its predecessor for nearly 20 years. She is paid $121,000 a year.

The examination of the authority by The Times was based on a review of public records, financial reports and board minutes. It included dozens of interviews with officials, utility customers, workers and outside experts.

In an interview last week, before he stepped down, Mr. Hervey defended the authority and indicated that he believed some customers had unrealistic expectations.

“We are on plan,” he said. “We cannot tell each of our 1.1 million customers exactly what is happening with their service. You can tell them generalities. So we cannot fully supply that information needed for individual customers.

“But I think, all said, when we look around at neighboring utilities, and the damage that we had, we are progressing very well.”

The interview took place at an office in Hicksville, where the scene was tense. A stream of frustrated customers knocked on doors, pleading for information and shouting at security guards, who turned them away.

“We haven’t had power since it happened,” Sophonie Sylvain, 30, a nursing home worker from Amityville, told the guards, her two young daughters and baby in tow. “Every day I call,” she said, adding that she always received the same response. “It will be on tomorrow.”

Flawed Paper Maps

As utility crews try to restore power on Long Island, they are hindered by an antiquated record system that consultants have repeatedly criticized, according to interviews and state reports.

Workers have often had to use paper maps and documents to locate damage. The record system has made it extremely hard for the authority to describe where power is out and where it will be restored, as well as when crews will arrive.

The map on the authority’s Web site was so flawed that a few days after the storm, it showed that power had been restored to more customers in Lawrence, in Nassau County, than there are homes in the village, its mayor, Martin Oliner, said.

“It was totally fictional, just preposterous,” Mayor Oliner said.

He asked the authority to reroute power to the village from an undamaged substation, which would take a few days. The authority eventually agreed, but continued telling Lawrence residents that they would not have power for three weeks.

Besieged by complaints about its map, the authority removed it from the Web and replaced it with a less detailed version.

These problems were first highlighted last year during Tropical Storm Irene, when it took the authority nine days to restore power to 523,000 customers.

After that storm, the State Public Service Commission issued a report that upbraided the authority. The authority’s monitoring and information systems were nowhere “near the industry standard,” said Walter P. Drabinski, a consultant on the report.

He said the authority had put off spending the $30 million or $40 million it would have cost for a state-of-the-art system.

“Without it during Irene, they were blind and it caused them a great deal of grief,” he said.

The authority’s board promised to install a new system, but it is not yet in place.

“It’s a huge computer upgrade that will take until next spring,” Mr. Hervey, the authority’s acting chief executive, said. “That will help us get a lot more information to customers.”

Contracted Service

Experts said the storm highlighted a fundamental flaw in the way that electricity is delivered on Long Island: the authority does not operate the power grid.

The authority is akin to a holding company, with fewer than 100 employees. It turns over service and maintenance to a contractor, impeding its ability to move nimbly during a crisis.

To complicate matters, the authority is switching to a new contractor in 2014, but its old one, National Grid, has been handling the grid during the storm and its aftermath. (National Grid was outbid for the contract by Public Service Enterprise Group.)

As a result, the authority has had less leverage over National Grid during the storm recovery.

National Grid has defended its performance.

“We are progressing very well, given the unprecedented damage from the storm,” John Bruckner, a senior vice president, said in a news conference.

The authority’s structure is a legacy of its creation.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo set up the authority in the 1980s when the Long Island Lighting Company enraged customers by failing to restore service quickly after Hurricane Gloria. The company had also stirred controversy over high rates and plans to open the Shoreham nuclear power plant.

The elder Mr. Cuomo vowed that the authority would keep costs down and communicate better, but even before Tropical Storm Irene and Hurricane Sandy, it had alienated customers, who pay some of the highest rates in the nation.

The authority ranked last in two recent national satisfaction surveys of utility customers, one by J. D. Power & Associates and another by American Consumer Satisfaction Index.

Politicians often seem to focus on the authority when they are looking to place relatives and friends at jobs there, according to interviews, local news reports and payroll records.

Lynda Nicolino, the former counsel to the Suffolk County Republican Party, earns $260,000 a year as the authority’s general counsel. Barbara Ann Dillon, a $125,000 compliance officer, is the daughter of Denis Dillon, the former Nassau County district attorney. Andrew McCabe, an assistant general counsel paid $117,000 a year, is the son of a former top judge in Nassau County.

Other top executives include former aides to the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, the former Suffolk County executive, Steve Levy, and the former head of the Suffolk Republican Party.

The executives did not respond to requests for comment.

Seeking Help, Gradually

A week before Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Petrone, of the Town of Huntington in Suffolk County, was preparing for the worst.

Using his battle plans for removing snow, he prepared 23 municipal crews to work with the Long Island Power Authority to deal with damage to the power grid.

But after the storm hit, the authority’s workers, overwhelmed by calls for help, did not show up.

Two authority crews eventually showed up in Huntington, but it was not much help, Mr. Petrone said.

“The upper management couldn’t communicate with the middle management,” he said. “The middle management couldn’t communicate with the crews. And finally, when we had sufficient crews coming in — resources that should have been arranged before — they came in and had very little direction and they were flabbergasted at the condition of the infrastructure, the wiring, the entire system.”

Such stories have been echoed by local officials across Long Island.

Mr. Hervey, the authority’s departing acting chief executive, said the agency had taken a gradual approach to calling in help from other states. He said the authority had asked for only 1,250 workers before Hurricane Sandy, but when it became clear how serious the storm would be, increased its request.

“That set up a competition regionwide for the scarce resource of linemen,” he said.

Eventually, the authority’s force increased to 11,000 outside workers, from as far as away as California.

Some customers said they sympathized with the authority’s challenge.

A 70-foot-tall oak knocked out power to Patricia Cammer’s home in Huntington Station on the night of the storm. The authority restored power six days later, but then the northeaster last week knocked it out again.

“LIPA is not prepared for this, but then who is?” she said.

Others were less forgiving.

Kathleen A. Desio, a mother of two boys in Baldwin Harbor, said she had spent two weeks without power in a house so chilly that her family’s 17-year-old African gray parrot died. “I think my children could do a better job managing that company than their current staff does,” Ms. Desio said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/nyregion/long-island-power-authoritys-flaws-hindered-recovery-efforts.html?hp

Cuomo on utilities: "Not God-given monopolies'

November 5, 2012 
By KEN SCHACHTER AND JOHN DYER 

Hudson Valley leaders blasted the region's electric utilities on Monday as election officials scrambled to prepare for the presidential vote, gas lines shrunk slightly, kids returned to school and a nor'easter threatened to bring more wind and rain to residents struggling to recover from Hurricane Sandy.

"I am not happy with any of them," Cuomo said of Con Edison, Orange & Rockland and New York State Electric and Gas during an evening news conference in Albany. "The utility companies have not performed adequately. I have let them know that."

Cuomo said the state would conduct hearings on the performance of the utilities and potentially impose penalties, which could range from sanctions to revoking their licenses.

"We can contract with other utility companies," Cuomo said, noting that 480,000 New Yorkers still have no electricity, including about 110,000 utility customers in the Hudson Valley. "These are not God-given monopolies. I will review all of them."

Cuomo took his shots after county executives in Rockland, Westchester and Orange County said they were fed up.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef had a news conference with Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy as about 19,000 Rockland County customers remained without power as of late Monday. The number of outages represents around 20 percent of the county's residents, Vanderhoef said.

"One in five people after 7 1/2 days is unacceptable," he said. "They are angry and frustrated and they want to know what we're doing. It's just impossible to think that that many people will spend a cold night in Rockland County without any power."

In Westchester County, County Executive Rob Astorino said that he would climb utility poles and join repair crews if it would help the approximately 70,000 Westchester County residents who still didn't have electricity as of Monday evening.

But Astorino added that stridency would not speed up the process.

"The louder we shout, 'Death penalty for the utility companies' is not going to get things done any more quickly," Astorino said. "Rest assured we're holding their feet to the fire."

With about 14,000 Orange County residents still without power on Monday night, County Executive Ed Diana demanded that state regulators review the performance of utility companies.

"It is simply unacceptable that so many Orange County residents remain without power this long after the storm," Diana said in a statement. "The outages threaten the life and safety of our residents, especially our sick and elderly."

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano also chimed in, charging that Con Ed has failed to respond to the city's 10,000 customers without power.

"Yonkers has been overlooked by Con Ed," Spano said in a statement.

O&R spokesman Mike Donovan acknowledged that "frustration is building up" but said power had been restored to 81 percent of the company's customers in Rockland County and 80 percent in Orange County.

"We're doing everything we can," Donovan said.

Con Edison Spokesman Allan Drury said the delays in bringing power back were a result of the scope of Sandy's damage.

Tropical Storm Irene, which had been the biggest storm in Con Ed history, caused blackouts for 203,841 customers in 2011, Drury said. By contrast, Sandy knocked out more than 950,000. "This is not only the biggest in company history, but the biggest by a huge margin," Drury said.

The power outages caused board of elections officials throughout the Hudson Valley to scramble for much of the day to make sure polling stations had electricity. By Monday evening, Rockland and Orange counties had designated a few alternate sites, and Westchester County officials told voters to proceed to their normal locations, saying generators would be running at buildings in need of power.

"All voters should go to their regular polling places," said Westchester County Board of Election Commissioners Douglas Colety and Reginald LaFayette in a public statement.

Random observations and comments from drivers suggested gas lines were growing shorter on Monday as repairs brought electricity to stations that had shut down and other were resupplied. But it was still common to wait a few hours for gas on Monday evening. Many New Yorkers were traveling upstate or to Connecticut to find open stations.

Charles Green, a Manhattan resident working a construction job in Peekskill, pulled his car into the Shell station in Westchester County as his gas gauge registered empty early on Monday and fueled up quickly.

"I'm pretty much shocked," Green said. "I feel like I got lucky, really lucky."

At his news conference, Cuomo said the state was streamlining rules to bring fuel from neighboring states. But he also warned people not to gas up more than they needed.

"Hoarding is only going to compound the situation and make it worse," he said.

The sense that the region was slowly but surely bouncing back was perhaps most pronounced in schools that opened after a week of closures due to the storm.

Sixteen-year-old Jess Tuttman, an 11th-grader at Ossining High School, said he was easing back into his regular routine.

"I just want to get back into the swing of things," he said.

Monday's good news was tempered by fears of the nor'easter that was threatening to arrive in the Hudson Valley on Wednesday.

Forecast to churn up the coast from Georgia, the storm could bring more rain and pack gusts of 35-40 mph in the southern portions of the Hudson Valley and 25-35 mph farther north, National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pollina said.

"The trees that endured Sandy may have been weakened a little," he said. "Any wind that comes with this storm could make other trees fall down."

Early in the day, Con Edison issued a statement saying that 84 percent of customers who had lost power during Sandy had their power restored, significant progress on the company's pledge to fix 90 percent of power outages by the end of the weekend. The company added that the coming nor'easter could slow restoration efforts.

"The company is monitoring the rain and wind forecasted for later this week," the statement said. The company said high winds and heavy rains could delay work on homes and businesses affected by Hurricane Sandy and could cause additional outages."

O&R's Donovan was more positive. The extraordinarily large group of 2,500 outside contractors supplementing the utility's 1,000-strong in-house repair force puts the company in a unique position to cope with the storm, he said.

"We have sufficient crews to address any damage," he said. "We're not setting aside crews to deal with the nor'easter. When it comes, we'll deal with it."

Although he didn't relieve the utilities of their responsibilities, Cuomo agreed that the new storm could hamper the region's recovery.

"This is complicated because it is a storm that would approach before we've recovered from the first storm and it would hit communities, some of which will not have power," the governor said.

Relief workers warned residents without heat to beware of signs of hypothermia as temperatures dip into the 30s in the coming days.

"If you feel yourself getting confused, where you can't feel your extremities, make sure you have plenty of blankets and you drink plenty of water," said Naomi Adler, president of the United Way of Westchester and Putnam.

http://newyork.newsday.com/westchester/cuomo-on-utilities-not-god-given-monopolies-1.4188255

U.S. Panel to Hear Opponents of Indian Point Nuclear Plant

By MATTHEW L. WALD

New York Times

October 11, 2012

The Indian Point nuclear plant is going on trial.

On Monday, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission will open a hearing to determine whether opponents, among them the Cuomo administration, have valid arguments against a 20-year extension of operating licenses for the Westchester County site’s reactors.

Three administrative law judges from the commission will take up an unusually long list of issues at the hearing, which will take place at a hotel in Tarrytown, N.Y., on 12 days in October and December.

In granting license extensions for reactors around the country, 70 to date, the commission has usually agreed to hear arguments on only a few technical issues. But in the case of Indian Point, the judges will hear at least 14.

Some of the issues from parties in the case are mechanical. Has Entergy, the plant’s owner, properly accounted for the possibility of corrosion in old pipes? What is the condition of the plant’s electrical cables, some of which are submerged in water and cannot be easily inspected? Has the plant been adequately monitoring buried pipes, some of which have already leaked, that carry radioactive materials?

Others are more slippery, like calculating the potential human costs of a major release of radioactive materials from the plant, in Buchanan, about 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

James Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, suggested that the plant’s opponents would try “to throw as much mud against the wall as they can and hope some of it sticks.”

“But by the same token,” Mr. Steets added, “it’s a process that allows for those who seriously have concerns to raise issues in a very public process.”

Either way, the tug of war over Indian Point’s future will probably go on for years. Ordinarily, the commission’s decisions on extending licenses take two and a half years. But Indian Point’s renewal application is now more than five years old, and the hearings have not even started.

The 40-year licenses of the plant’s two reactors are set to expire in September 2013 and December 2015. But under agency rules, the licenses will remain in effect until the commission makes a final ruling.

Since his days as the New York State attorney general, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has been arguing that the plant should be closed — that the reactors have safety problems and are vulnerable to terrorism. He has cited their proximity to nine million people in the New York metropolitan region.

The current attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, whose office represents the state in the hearings, has been slightly less emphatic.

“Whatever it is that the state determines to do, I’m the state’s lawyer and I will defend that,” Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said last summer in an interview with WMHT, a public television station in Albany. “But I think they have a pretty steep hill to climb given the location of the plant and the population density around it and some of the problems that have come up with the plant.”

In a way, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is on trial, too, given that its staff has already concluded that relicensing is warranted.

After the three administrative law judges — two engineers and a lawyer — rule on the challenges, the losing side is expected to appeal directly to the five-member commission in Washington. If the commission upholds a challenge, Entergy will have to change hardware or procedures at Indian Point to solve the problem unless it decides that the cost makes retiring the plant more prudent economically.

Expert testimony from Entergy and the plant’s opponents has already been filed, so much of the hearing will consist of cross-examination of witnesses and questions from the judges. The state is pressing for additional opportunities to cross-examine witnesses, and the commission plans to rule on that request on Friday.

Another avenue the state is pursuing to shut down Indian Point, the denial of a state water-use permit, could threaten the plant regardless of the commission’s final decision. The state contends that the plant’s cooling water technology kills too many fish when it draws water from the Hudson River and that Entergy should build cooling towers.

But a court could reverse that decision if it found that the state’s real motivation was nuclear safety, a federal responsibility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/science/earth/hearings-set-on-renewing-indian-point-reactors-licenses.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

LIPA prepares to heat up solar incentives

by Claude Solnik

Long Island Business News

Published: March 6, 2012

Just days after the reducing existing incentives for companies installing solar power, the Long Island Power Authority is gearing up to launch a new, far-reaching incentive program in which it will pay customers based on the solar power they produce.

LIPA Chief Operating Officer Michael Hervey described the program, which could be in place as early as this summer, during his speech at the Hauppauge Industrial Association’s annual energy update on Tuesday.

The authority hopes to formally announce a feed-in solar tariff rate in April, paying customers based on solar energy they generate, although the program wouldn’t launch immediately. Feed-in tariffs have been used in states such as California and Florida, where solar energy has caught on rapidly.

Although the tariff would apply to both residential and commercial customers, Hervey said it could make bigger installations, in particular, more economical.

“It’s more of an incentive for medium-to-larger solar installations,” Hervey said. “It allows medium-to-larger solar installations to feed directly into the grid and get paid a fixed price for selling into the electric grid.”

Hervey announced the broad outlines of the program, but not the rates or details, days after the authority cut its commercial solar rebate from $1.75 per kilowatt to $1.50, matching the rest of the state.

“It was so successful that just last week we had to drop the rebate amount,” he said. “We had a very high subscription rate for the commercial program in December and January. We’re well on our way to using our whole year quota for commercial solar.”

LIPA hopes the feed-in tariff could generate a new burst of interest in larger projects, further fueling solar power on Long Island. Hervey said the tariff would supplement existing programs, such as solar installation rebates that are driving a shift to solar.

“It’s all about policy,” said Neal Lewis, executive director of the Sustainability Institute at Molloy Collegeand a LIPA board member. “You can train people to install solar panels. But if you don’t have the right policy, they won’t get a job. We’re expanding.”

Solar contractors said small solar installations already caught on in this region, but a feed-in tariff could prompt a new generation of projects.

“The market is very driven by regional policies, such as LIPA’s program,” said Gentry Rouse, director of business development for Clermont, NY-based Premier Power. “In New York, we’ve seen a market for smaller systems. This feed-in tariff opens up the opportunity for larger systems.”

Supporters of feed-in tariffs point out that systems are reimbursed based not on cost, but generation, so efficient systems are rewarded at a higher rate.

“When you look at large commercial systems, you can get the price per installed solar down,” Rouse said. “The paybacks are there really for larger systems.”

A National Renewable Energy Laboratory study of feed-in tariffs described various types, including some that are constant, while others vary based on energy cost.

Utilities in Florida, Hawaii and Vermont have adopted feed-in tariff policies based on the cost of generation, while Maine adopted a cost-based tariff with a cap. California, on the other hand, adopted a feed-in tariff based on “avoided cost” related to market prices.

LIPA also is developing a remote net metering tariff in which companies that install solar power away from their facilities will be able to reap benefits of solar programs.

“That opens up some real possibilities, being able to use property in less dense areas to net meter usage against a building in a higher density area,” Hervey said.

Hervey said the authority hopes the feed-in tariff as well as streamlined and standardized permitting will lead to a new crop of solar projects as more medium-sized businesses get on board. “It certainly opens up another market,” Hervey added of the tariff. “We’ll have to see what it brings. It’s meant to be a whole new market.”

The feed-in tariff is part of several changes in the works for solar programs, for which LIPA has about $25 million set aside for incentive programs. There are currently about 70 megawatts of solar power on Long Island.

LIPA, meanwhile, has led a push for towns to sign on for a uniform solar code, in which standard regulations and costs govern installation.

http://libn.com/2012/03/06/lipa-prepares-to-heat-up-solar-incentives/

New Push for congestion pricing? Not from City Hall

Wall Street Journal

By Michael Howard Saul

Bloomberg News

Traffic on the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in New York City.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg still strongly supports the idea of charging motorists to enter the most congested parts of Manhattan. Just don’t expect him to re-launch another effort to get the controversial, revenue-generating proposal approved in Albany any time soon.

“I happen to think it makes some sense, but I’m going to stay out of it,” Bloomberg said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve done everything we can.”

In 2007 Bloomberg pledged to “fight like heck” to get the state Legislature to approve a congestion-pricing plan that would have charged motorists $8 to enter Manhattan anywhere below 86th St. between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays.

The mayor, true to his word, aggressively lobbied for the proposal. But ultimately lawmakers in Albany rejected the measure, dealing Bloomberg one of the most high-profile defeats of his tenure as chief executive of the nation’s most populous city.

Responding to questions about a Daily News story suggesting a renewed effort to pass some form of congestion pricing, Bloomberg on Wednesday joked sarcastically, “What a clever idea! My God, how did they think of that?”

“Just think about how much better off we would have been today if five years ago, or thereabouts, the Albany Legislature” moved forward with the proposal, Bloomberg added. “You want to dissuade people from driving because the streets are clogged. We are never going to have more streets. So, you have to have fewer cars,” he said. “You can only have fewer cars if you have better mass transit, so that people have alternatives that are cost effective and pleasurable and more efficient.”

The money generated from charging motorists was to be directed toward improving mass transit. Despite his interest, Bloomberg said supporters of the concept shouldn’t count on him to lead the charge this time.

“We’re not working on it,” he said. “This is up to Albany. Talk to Albany.”

A City Hall aide confirmed Wednesday there is currently nothing concrete on the table and said the mayor would not actively lend support to congestion pricing again without a politically viable proposal.

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2011/01/26/new-push-for-congestion-pricing-not-from-city-hall/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&mod=WSJ_NY_NY_Blog