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

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

Life Without Indian Point, Redux

By MATTHEW L. WALD

NY Times

9/7/12

The consequences of running the Indian Point nuclear reactors or shutting them down run from easy-to-spot to hard-to-calculate.

Is a serious accident plausible? Would retiring the reactors open the way for alternative sources of electricity that pose a lower safety risk? Or simply ensure an economic blow?

Two Westchester County business groups have sponsored a study, released on Friday, that takes the latter view — a counterpoint a 2011 study by opponentsthat argued that there was nothing indispensable about the reactors.

The new report, by Howard J. Axelrod, a longtime economics consultant, predicts payroll and tax payment losses (which seem pretty certain) and takes a stab at predicting electricity rate increases and a general decline in economic activity. The study was sponsored by the Business Council of Westchester (of which Entergy, Indian Point’s owner, is a member), and the Westchester Business Alliance

The report updates a version commissioned by Westchester business interests four years ago.

Some of the numbers are straightforward. Indian Point has 1,200 employees and uses another 200 contractors. The employee payroll is $130 million, and the plant pays $75 million in property taxes plus additional taxes to New York State.

The study quotes an earlier estimate that the plant contributes $363 million to local purchases. (Some fraction of the payroll and property taxes would continue during the decommissioning of the plant’s reactors.) A high-efficiency natural gas plant of the same capacity might employ only 20 workers, the study said.

It’s a little harder to estimate the effect on electric rates.

New York State’s electricity system relies on a complicated auction method whereby utilities like Con Edison say how much electricity they think they will need and generating companies say what price they need to produce electricity.

A computer tallies up the demand and ranks the suppliers by price, from lowest to highest. It then decides which generators will run, beginning with the lowest-priced and continuing until demand is met, with the last megawatt-hour being the priciest. Yet all generators get paid the price demanded by the last supplier.

Indian Point is a relatively low-cost supplier. If it disappears, the computer will have to reach higher into the stack of generation offers to match supply to demand, and that last megawatt-hour will be more expensive. So all generators will receive more income, and all consumers will pay more.

Mr. Axelrod’s study puts Indian Point’s energy costs at $44 to $53 per megawatt-hour. He says that the least costly alternative would be a plant burning natural gas at high efficiency, which would cost $76 to $109 per megawatt-hour. He estimates an increase in electricity rates of 6.3 percent, or $374 million a year.

Of the two functioning Indian Point reactors (Unit 1 closed down in 1974), Unit 2’s license expires in 2013, and Unit 3’s in 2015. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to turn down a request for a license extension, although it wants some steps to be taken on safety at the plant.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants the plant retired, and while the state has no jurisdiction over safety, it is trying to deny a vital water-use permit. Under the commission’s rules, the plant’s existing licenses are valid beyond their expiration dates if an application for a renewal is still under consideration.

The debate over the effects of shutting down the plant will surely drag on.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/life-without-indian-point-redux/

Record Warm Water in Long Island Sound Shuts Down Connecticut Nuclear Power Plant

Posted by Joseph Eaton on August 13, 2012

National Geographic -- The Great Energy Challenge

In a sign of the severity of this summer’s record heat, one of the two reactors at Connecticut’s only nuclear power plant has been shut down due to historically high water temperatures in Long Island Sound, source of the facility’s cooling water.

Unit 2 of Millstone Power Plant near New London was shut down Sunday afternoon after temperatures in the sound exceeded 75 degrees for 24 hours, the maximum temperature at which the nuclear power plant has permits to extract cooling water for the unit, said Ken Holt, spokesman for plant operator Dominion.

The outage in southeastern Connecticut appeared to have no immediate impact on power delivery, as the New England grid operator reported that the system operations were normal. New England was expected to have a buffer of 26 percent more electricity supply than peak demand this summer, according to a national reliability outlook published earlier this year.

But it’s a dramatic development for the water temperature in the sound to close the unit. Holt said company records dating back to 1971 show that this summer’s heat wave has led to the highest recorded water temperatures in the sound.

“It’s not that it’s been hitting 100 every day, but it’s been steady heat,” he said. “We haven’t been getting any breaks. Also we had a very mild winter, so (the sound temperatures) started from a higher point than we traditionally have.”

Holt said that Millstone’s other reactor, Unit 3, pulls water from deeper in the sound than does Unit 2, and so far has not been affected by the warm waters. However, he said the unit has the same temperature limit under which it can operate. “If temperatures continue to rise, Unit 3 will be shut down as well,” he said. (Unit 1 at the southeast Connecticut plant ceased operation in 1998 and is being decommissioned.) Together, the two Millstone reactors produce about 16 million megawatt-hours of electricity per year—enough to power 500,000 homes.

So far this summer, the Millstone unit appears to be the only U.S. nuclear power plant to face shut-down due to the record-breaking weather, the hottest July on record since 1895 and the most wide-reaching drought since 1956. Nuclear and coal power plants rely on cooling water, and past droughts and severe heat waves in the United States have shut down plants—with those located on rivers considered the most vulnerable. In Iowa, this year, authorities have watched closely the water levels in parched Cedar River, cooling water source for that state’s only nuclear power plant, Duane Arnold. Despite the drought, however, the power plant has operated near capacity all summer, except for a 5 percent reduction in output for several hours during the height of the July heat wave.

August is typically the peak month in the United States for nuclear generation, according to the industry trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. The NEI earlier this summer noted on its blog that more than 90 percent of the nation’s nuclear capacity remained available, despite the heat. The current operating status for all U.S. nuclear power plants can be seen here.

http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/2012/08/13/record-warm-water-in-long-island-sound-shuts-down-connecticut-nuclear-power-plant/

In Japan, energy saving takes its toll

By Chico Harlan

Washington Post

August 10

SAPPORO, Japan — In this summer of idled nuclear plants and energy shortages, corporate Japan is operating under duress.

Workers in short-sleeve dress shirts spend their days in 82-degree offices, the new standard. Lights are dimmed and printers are on only when necessary. Companies chart their energy use, and at one bread factory on this northern island, an employee jumps on the PA system when electricity usage spikes, ordering air conditioners off and asking select workers to stop what they’re doing.

“This is a demand warning,” the announcer says, reading from a script. “We ask for your cooperation.”
But many Japanese companies are tired of cooperating. Asked by the government to use less electricity, companies say the cutbacks curb their productivity, thin their profits and could eventually stall the world’s third-largest economy.

The energy-saving push was seen on a smaller scale last year after an earthquake and tsunami triggered a crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Japan’s east coast and caused shutdowns at several others, and Japanese companies obliged without complaint. Electricity conservation, or “setsuden,” was a way to help the post-disaster cause.

But this year, Japanese business leaders say, the energy-saving feels more like a major drain than a goodwill duty. Unlike last summer, when severe shortages were confined to the northeast, even regions far removed from the Fukushima plant now face shortages, with all but two of Japan’s 50 viable reactors shuttered amid public opposition. Utility companies are importing record levels of fossil fuels, but even that hasn’t covered the gap. That leaves companies — many that were already energy-efficient — straining for unorthodox ways to meet peak-hour summer reduction targets.

Electronics giant Panasonic told employees at its Osaka headquarters to take a nine-day paid vacation in late July. Manufacturer Nippon Tungsten, in Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, bumped work shifts to the weekend to avoid peak hours and, to use less air conditioning, started spraying factory rooftops with cold water.

Breadmaker Nichiryo, based in Hokkaido, leased a 200 kilovolt-ampere diesel generator, which sits like a horse trailer outside its main factory and supplies electricity at four times the cost of the regional utility company.

“It makes no sense financially to use the generator,” said Hidetaka Matsuda, a Nichiryo manager in charge of energy use. “We’re doing it just to achieve the reduction target.”

Matsuda described the energy restrictions as “severe.” A Panasonic spokeswoman said they’ve had a “major impact” on business. At the Kawai Tekkou Iron Works plant in Hokkaido, some employees second-guess the need for conservation and point fingers at the utility company, which they feel should provide the necessary amount.

“Our work shouldn’t suffer,” said Hiroki Kawai, an employee who is a third-generation member of the family business. Kawai said he was describing others’ complaints, not his own.

The energy debate

The economy-sapping energy shortages hint at the stakes of the fierce debate over Japan’s energy future. At the root is whether Japan, in the wake of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant, should renounce nuclear power to build a less disaster-prone country or re-embrace it to fuel a more economically viable one.

At the 11 public hearings the government has held to discuss nuclear power, 70 percent of the citizens who spoke said they favored a no-nuclear policy by 2030. That is one of the three plans being considered, along with options under which nuclear power would make up 15 or 20 to 25 percent of Japan’s total energy supply by 2030.

It is the leaders of corporate Japan, along with top government officials, who form the powerful pro-nuclear minority. Persistent energy shortages, they say, will wreak havoc on a resource-poor nation whose energy costs — already among the world’s highest — will further rise with growing fossil fuel imports.

Japan needs nuclear power for a stable electricity supply, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said in June, and without that, “Japanese society will not be able to function.”

A nuclear Japan, according to December 2011 projections from Tokyo-based Institute of Energy Economics, would have a GDP in 2012 roughly two points higher than a non-nuclear one, and experts say the difference could be even greater if oil prices spike.

Anti-nuclear activists say that Japan could replace nuclear power, which once supplied one-third of the nation’s electricity, with renewable sources. But that will take years of work and billions in investment. This summer’s shortages have convinced some corporations that nuclear power is essential, at least until progress on renewable energy is made.

“It’s preferable to reduce our dependency on nuclear power plants in the medium- to long-term,” said Cathy Liu, a Panasonic spokeswoman. “However, there is no other way but to keep using nuclear power plants, with attention to their safety, as we do not have an alternative energy at this point.”

The shortages, in theory, can disappear — or at least diminish — with just the flick of a few switches, as seen last month when Japan’s central government ordered the reboot of two reactors in the industrial heartland known as Kansai. With that restart, the Kansai region’s energy-saving request was trimmed to 10 percent of 2010 peak levels from 15 percent. Each region has different energy-saving targets, imposed on companies and households, depending on the severity of shortages faced by utilities in the area.

In Hokkaido, households and companies are being asked to shave 7 percent from their 2010 peak-hour consumption levels. Were the local utility able to operate even a single reactor, such a request wouldn’t be necessary.

The saving is not mandatory, and companies face no punishment for ignoring the request. But by doing so, they risk sudden blackouts that would come if demand by the utility’s customers exceeds capacity. So far this summer, this verdant island famous for its agriculture has avoided such a scenario — a sign, officials here say, that the voluntary cutbacks are working.

The energy-saving, though, is expected to get harder the longer it goes on. A 2011 report from the International Energy Agency on urgent electricity shortages said that “consumers may be more willing to conserve energy if they know the shortfall is short-term.” Japanese people “will become tired and exhausted” over the long haul as the country loses the feeling of post-disaster crisis, said Yu Nagatomi, an economist at the Institute of Energy Economics.

This year, some in Japan are brushing off energy-saving as a low priority — something unheard of last year after the disaster. At a spring meeting with regional farm leaders, Hokkaido’s powerful agricultural co-op recommended only a few modest ways for farmers and producers to cut back electricity — and mostly on the office side, not with actual machinery. Save electricity, a document outlining the meeting said, only to the extent that “it does not create any trouble for managing your business.”

Difficult to plan

The energy shortages are particularly vexing for companies because nobody knows how long they’ll last.

Energy experts say that the best way for corporations to reduce consumption is with heavy investment, particularly in energy-efficient lighting and in modern machinery. Companies, though, are hesitant to spend the money before they know Japan’s long-term plan for the nuclear plants.

During a recent tour of his family’s iron factory, which employs 40 people, Kawai pointed out the many decades-old appliances he’d love to replace. Wiring. Machinery. The fire-hot mercury lamps that light up his factory “like a baseball stadium.”

But Kawai Tekkou has lost 28 million yen over the past two years. Major investment in ­energy-efficient machinery isn’t so smart if Hokkaido’s three reactors are operating by next summer. In the interim, Kawai Tekkou is trying to save electricity only on the office side, by using less lighting and air conditioning.

“It’s almost impossible to do energy conservation without [changing] the machines,” Kawai said.
He emphasized that energy-saving is an admirable goal, and he’d prefer that Japan not rely on nuclear power because of the safety risks. But he has come to think that the country has no choice.

“People say, ‘Shut down all the plants,’ ” Kawai said. “But then what do we do in the alternative? We’re stuck.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-japan-energy-saving-takes-its-toll/2012/08/10/3fef736e-dfb3-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

Climate Change Threatens Power Output, Study Says

By MATTHEW L. WALD

New York Times

June 4, 2012

As the climate gets warmer, so do the rivers and lakes that power plants draw their cooling water from. And that is going to make it harder to generate electricity in decades to come, researchers report.

In an article in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists measured temperatures now and projected what they would be at midcentury. The temperatures vary according to the time of year, and, even if the extremes remain similar, they will be more frequent — meaning that the water will be too warm to allow full power production, they predict.

All power plants that burn coal or split uranium, and most of the plants that burn natural gas, turn the resulting heat into steam, which spins a turbine that turns a generator to make power. Then the steam has to be converted back to water before being reheated. If the river or lake water used to condense the steam is getting warmer, the amount it can condense is reduced, leading to a decline in power output.

Using computer projections of climate change possible outcomes, the researchers wrote that generating capacity in the United States could fall 4.4 to 16 percent on hot days from 2031 to 2060. And the number of days when river water is at a temperature that is now considered extremely high will be triple the number today, on average, they said.

The idea of varying availability of cooling water is not new; many American steam-electric plants already have a summer power rating and a winter power rating.

Extremely hot weather is not the norm today. Still, power plants have experienced the headache of cooling water shortages in the past. Some power plants in the United States shut down during a drought in 1988 because the level of water in the Mississippi fell below the opening of their intake pipes.

The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium, produced a lengthy study in 1995 on the threat posed by climate change. It discussed the possibility of federal limits on carbon dioxide emissions (which 17 years later, may now be approaching) and the problem of hot cooling water.

It found that in addition to making electricity harder to generate, warm weather would make peaks in electricity demand even higher. That would raise costs, it said, because utilities might need more generating stations that would run for only a few hours a year, during the peak summer demand periods.

It also pointed out that if rainfall patterns changed, hydroelectric dams would be less productive.

The solutions to this problem are not obvious. Wind generation might not help much, because the wind usually does not blow much in hot weather. Solar photovoltaic cells could help, but they do not generate much in the last hour before sunset, and not at all after that. That is the period in which many utilities experience peak demand, as people return home from work and turn on air-conditioners, television sets and ovens.

Some generating stations have air-cooled condensers that use electrically driven fans instead of water. But that means less output of electricity – and more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt-hour.

The researchers who wrote the article for Nature Climate Change — from Austria, the Netherlands, Germany and Washington State — pointed out that plants running on natural gas at a higher efficiency – that is, putting more of the heat into making power and less into waste that must be absorbed by water — could be helpful. Because generating plants usually last for many decades, ”adaptation options should be included in today’s planning,’’ they wrote.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/climate-change-threatens-power-output-study-says/?src=recg

Vision for Affordable Energy Even if Indian Point Nuclear Plant Is Shut Down

January 12, 2012

By JIM DWYER

New York Times

If anyone, or any business, can get a good deal on electricity, it ought to be Consolidated Edison, which buys loads of it every year and then sells it to three million customers in New York City and the suburbs. Like most traditional utility companies, it has gotten out of the power generation business in recent years and is now a distribution company. It buys the electricity that it delivers from generators run by independent companies.

So when Con Ed goes shopping, where does it find the best prices?

The question came up Thursday at a legislative hearing in the city on the future of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wants to close. Whether he succeeds or not, the action will be a pivot in the history of New York City. The state has plenty of relatively cheap and clean electricity from hydropower and wind farms, but it is trapped in the northern reaches of the state by a distribution system that hits a traffic jam of electrons before it gets near the city.

Indian Point, however, is in Westchester County, south of that congestion, and its electricity flows without obstacles into the city, just about 30 miles away. That very geography is also driving the effort by the governor and others to close the plant, which is getting old.

There is little confidence that people would be able to evacuate the region, much less the most densely populated big city in the country, in the event of a serious accident. (A leak of radioactive water in a cooling pump forced the plant to shut down one of its two generators this week.)

If the plant closes in the next few years, the 2,000 megawatts of electricity that it produces will have to come from somewhere else — that is, somewhere either in or near the city. Business and union officials spoke Thursday, as they have before, in support of the continued operation of Indian Point, arguing that the economy would be hobbled by the loss of so much cheap electricity.

Interestingly, the current electricity prices are kept secret by the generating companies and the utilities.

But by poring through Con Edison’s annual reports, James F. Brennan, a Democratic member of the Assembly from Brooklyn who also represents the Working Families Party, managed to figure out the prices it paid in 2010 to four of its leading suppliers.

Here are the numbers Mr. Brennan found for each kilowatt hour:

¶ 12.8 cents, from a wholesale market based in Albany.

¶ 8.2 cents from a gas-fired power plant in Astoria, Queens.

¶ 7.7 cents from the Indian Point nuclear generators.

¶ 6.8 cents from a gas-powered co-generation plant operated in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Mr. Brennan thinks that New York can get by without the electricity generated by Indian Point and that the city will not be putting itself at a financial disadvantage. Other cities actually make their own electricity, and do so at lower costs than some commercial suppliers, he noted at the hearing. Asked by a city official if he thought that the city should get into that business, Mr. Brennan paused for a minute. “Yes,” he said.

Certainly, the cost of making electricity has declined drastically in the last few years, in large part because the price of natural gas has been dropping. The decrease in price has made electricity from natural gas competitive with nuclear power. In 2008, the price of natural gas was $12 or $13 for a quantity known as a decatherm.

“Right now, it is $3 for a decatherm,” said Joseph P. Oates, a vice president at Con Edison.

Newer gas-generating plants are far more efficient than the ones they are replacing, and the city has helped developers build new ones in Queens. Con Edison, which used to own Indian Point, does not have a position on the continued operation of its old plant, but Mr. Oates said: “If you close it, it has to be replaced with something. The question is, what is that something?”

Natural gas plants have low emissions, but Norris McDonald, the president of the African American Environmentalist Association, said during a break in the hearing that Indian Point had virtually no emissions. “Where it is now, it is an environmental asset,” he said. “If you shut it down, whatever you’re going to replace it with is going to increase emissions in communities like Harlem.”

Other environmentalists argue that much of the slack can be made up with a combination of greater efficiency and more renewable energy, like solar, wind and tidal power. But when?

A wise colleague once gave me a warning on another dense topic: If you think you understand the problem, he said, then it hasn’t been properly explained to you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/nyregion/vision-for-cheap-power-even-if-indian-point-nuclear-plant-is-closed.html?pagewanted=print

How Essential Is Indian Point?

October 18, 2011, 12:34 PM

By MATTHEW L. WALD

New York Times

As I reported in Tuesday’s paper, opponents of the Indian Point nuclear power plant assert that its two reactors can be retired in the next few years because alternatives exist that pose less risk and would not cost substantially more. New York City’s position, however, is that retiring the reactors would raise prices sharply and reduce reliability.

So, what would those alternatives be? New York’s electricity infrastructure resembles its highway system, prone to saturation. Once in a while, though, new transmission capacity does gets added.

This month, in a little-noticed development, the Bayonne Energy Center finished a 6.75-mile cable that runs from Bayonne, N.J., under the Kill Van Kull, through Upper New York Bay to Gowanus Bay and then to Con Edison’s Gowanus substation. The company plans to build a 512-megawatt gas-fired power station on the New Jersey side.

In May, work began on a 660-megawatt cable that would run eight miles from Ridgefield, N.J., to Pier 92 in Manhattan, and then to Con Edison’s 49th Street substation. Six miles of it will be underwater.

Opponents are also counting on projects like the Champlain-Hudson Express, a 1,000-megawatt submarine line that would connect Hydro Quebec with New York City. The two Indian Point reactors, in Westchester County, N.Y., produce a bit over 2,000 megawatts.

Opponents of Indian Point commissioned a study from the research and consulting firm Synapse Energy Economics. Synapse acknowledged that the effect of closing Indian Point was hard to predict because it depends partly on the overall level of electricity demand in the New York City area.

Synapse said that part of the portfolio of alternatives should be a high level of improvement in energy efficiency, effectively cutting demand by 1.5 percent from what it would be otherwise.

Under Gov. Eliot Spitzer, New York State committed itself to reducing its energy use to 15 percent below “business as usual” by 2015. At the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups that sponsored the Synapse study, Ashok Gupta, an energy expert, acknowledged that the state is “not on target” to meet the Spitzer goal, let alone a tougher one. But he pointed out that some smaller states like Vermont had achieved such reductions.

The feasibility study is part of a broader effort by Mr. Gupta’s group and Riverkeeper, the study’s other sponsor, to position themselves for license renewal hearings on Indian Point that are expected to start in the spring. At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Scott Burnell, a spokesman, said, “I can’t remember any license renewal proceeding that has been this involved.”

The runners-up in terms of controversy are probably Oyster Creek in New Jersey, which eventually won a 20-year extension but whose owners promised to shut it in 2020 in a deal with state environmental regulators, and Pilgrim in Plymouth, Mass., a renewal process that is still under way.

So far the commission has not turned down any applications for license renewals, although it has instructed some applicants to do more work.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/how-essential-is-indian-point/?scp=3&sq=con%20edison&st=cse

Germany Dims Nuclear Plants, but Hopes to Keep Lights On

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: August 29, 2011

BIBLIS, Germany — Not since the grim period after World War II has Germany had significant blackouts, but it is now bracing for that possibility after shutting down half its nuclear reactors practically overnight.

Nuclear plants have long generated nearly a quarter of Germany’s electricity. But after the tsunami and earthquake that sent radiation spewing from Fukushima, half a world away, the government disconnected the 8 oldest of Germany’s 17 reactors — including the two in this drab factory town — within days. Three months later, with a new plan to power the country without nuclear energy and a growing reliance on renewable energy, Parliament voted to close them permanently. There are plans to retire the remaining nine reactors by 2022.

As a result, electricity producers are scrambling to ensure an adequate supply. Customers and companies are nervous about whether their lights and assembly lines will stay up and running this winter. Economists and politicians argue over how much prices will rise.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s just go for renewables,’ and I’m quite sure we can someday do without nuclear, but this is too abrupt,” said Joachim Knebel, chief scientist at Germany’s prestigious Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He characterized the government’s shutdown decision as “emotional” and pointed out that on most days, Germany has survived this experiment only by importing electricity from neighboring France and the Czech Republic, which generate much of their power with nuclear reactors.

Then there are real concerns that the plan will jettison efforts to rein in manmade global warming, since whatever nuclear energy’s shortcomings, it is low in emissions. If Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy, falls back on dirty coal-burning plants or uncertain supplies of natural gas from Russia, isn’t it trading a potential risk for a real one?

The world is watching Germany’s extreme energy makeover, as politicians from New York to Rome have floated their own plans to shut or shelve reactors.

The International Energy Agency, generally a fan of Germany’s green-leaning energy policy, has been critical. Laszlo Varro, head of the agency’s gas, coal and power markets division, called the plan “very, very ambitious, though it is not impossible, since Germany is rich and technically sophisticated.”

Even if Germany succeeds in producing the electricity it needs, “the nuclear moratorium is very bad news in terms of climate policy,” Mr. Varro said. “We are not far from losing that battle, and losing nuclear makes that unnecessarily difficult.”

The government counters that it is prepared to make huge investments in improving energy efficiency in homes and factories as well as in new clean power sources and transmission lines. So far, there have been no blackouts.

But Jürgen Grossmann, chief executive of the German energy giant RWE, which owns two closed reactors here in Biblis, about 40 miles south of Frankfurt, expressed skepticism. “Germany, in a very rash decision, decided to experiment on ourselves,” he said. “The politics are overruling the technical arguments.”

The Nuclear Equation

Germany’s planners believed they could forgo nuclear energy in large part because of the country’s remarkable progress in renewable energy, which now accounts for 17 percent of its electricity output, a number the government estimates will double in 10 years. On days when the offshore wind turbines spin full tilt, Germany produces more electricity from renewable sources than it uses, according to European energy monitors.

Germany has “exceeded everyone’s expectations on renewable power,” said Mr. Varro, showing that it could be cost effective and reliable.

Until it closed the reactors, Germany was Europe’s leading energy exporter.

With a total of 133 gigawatts of installed generating capacity in place at the start of this year, “there was really a huge amount of space to shut off nuclear plants,” Harry Lehmann, a director general of the German Federal Environment Agency and one of Germany’s leading policy makers on energy and environment, said of the road map he helped develop. The country needs about 90.5 gigawatts of generating capacity on hand to fill a typical national demand of about 80 gigawatts a day. So the 25 gigawatts that nuclear power contributed would not be missed — at least within its borders.

To be prudent, the plan calls for the creation of 23 gigawatts of gas- and coal-powered plants by 2020. Why? Because renewable plants don’t produce nearly to capacity if the air is calm or the sky is cloudy, and there is currently limited capacity to store or transport electricity, energy experts say.

New coal and gas plants will use the cleanest technology available and should not aggravate climate change, government officials said, because they will operate within the European carbon-trading system in which plants that exceed the allowed emissions cap have to buy carbon credits from companies whose activities are environmentally beneficial, thus evening out the environmental ledger.

Electricity prices are expected to rise by 35 to 40 euros ($50 to $60) per household each year, or less than 5 percent, the government estimates. Though nuclear energy generally costs less than newer options, German law has long stipulated that renewable energy must be purchased first even if it is costlier.

But skeptics consider government assumptions overly optimistic. Stefan Martus, the mayor of Philippsburg, says he believes energy costs could rise more dramatically than government estimates; the price of permits to offset dirty power plants is highly unpredictable and variable, like the value of stocks. And the International Energy Agency does not think Germany — or any other country — will be able to reduce its emissions at a reasonable cost without nuclear power.

Energy agency officials also question predictions that electricity use will decline an additional 10 percent over the next decade given the projected expansion of electric growth of the German economy. The average German family already uses only about half the electricity of its American equivalent.

“Yes, there is German angst about nuclear power,” said Hildegard Cornelius-Gaus, the mayor of Biblis. ”But if you phrased the question, ‘Would you want to phase out nuclear energy if it cost massively more and you risk blackouts?’ the answer would be very different.”

An Ambivalent History

Even before Fukushima, nuclear energy’s days in Germany were numbered. Biblis had been the site of giant national antinuclear demonstrations, and Germany was already enacting a plan for slowly phasing out nuclear energy by 2023. The country had become the world leader in wind power and a master at squeezing more energy efficiency out of appliances and homes, having built tens of thousands of self-heating “passive houses.”

Still, Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a physicist, decided last fall to extend the operating licenses of Germany’s nuclear plants over concerns that innovation alone would not satisfy the country’s energy appetite.

Fukushima changed everything.

That Japan is a technologically advanced country made the nuclear accident more alarming to the German people than the Chernobyl disaster, at an old Soviet reactor. Despite that, industry experts and residents of reactor towns like Biblis and nearby Philippsburg were stunned by the suddenness of the about-face.

Both towns will lose hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue.

German energy companies say they have been handed a national energy template that looks good on paper but is technically challenging. Although the country’s production of energy is bounteous, they say it is not always available where and when it is needed. Northern Germany has offshore wind and coal deposits, but southern Germany — a manufacturing epicenter that is home to Mercedes, BMW and Audi — has no plentiful local fuel source other than nuclear. Germany’s current grid is highly decentralized, lacking high-voltage transmission lines to move electricity over long distances.

“Now, with the nuclear shut down, we have a very difficult task,” said Joachim Vanzetta, head of transmission system operations at Amprion, the largest of the country’s four grid operators.

Amprion had already started working toward a renewable future with no nuclear power, planning for 500 miles of new transmission lines to bring electricity from north to south that would cost $4.3 billion and take 10 to 15 years to build. At most, 40 miles of lines have been completed.

The country has also been pouring money into biomass plants and solar installations — millions of panels now sit on German roofs and fields. Despite recent technological improvements, solar electricity is still far more expensive to generate than wind, gas or nuclear power. And output can be highly seasonal.

Germany’s hope that gas and coal plants will temporarily replace some of the lost nuclear generation may be hard to fulfill — power companies remain lukewarm about building them especially given the German policy of buying “clean” energy first. “Few operators will be willing to build a power plant in a form that may ultimately only run a couple of hundred hours a year,” Mr. Grossman of RWE said.

This winter, Amprion predicts its grid will have 84,000 megawatts of electricity at its disposal, to provide 81,000 megawatts needed for consumption — an uncomfortably slim margin of safety, Mr. Vanzetta said. In prior years, electricity was readily available for purchase on the European grid if the price was right. But exported German power is what helped keep France glowing in winter.

“At the moment, we have a stressed system, but it’s under control,” Mr. Vanzetta said. “If we have days with no wind and no solar and can’t buy energy from abroad, then there is the risk of blackouts.
”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 30, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Unplugging Reactors, Hoping Lights Stay On.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/science/earth/30germany.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

If Indian Point Closes, Plenty of Challenges

By MATTHEW L. WALD

July 13, 2011

Peculiarities of the electricity system in New York State, including its unusual independent status, would make it difficult and expensive to replace electricity from the Indian Point nuclear power plant if Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo succeeds in shutting it down, experts on the grid warn.

Closing the plant could also increase the frequency of power failures, officials who run the state’s high-voltage grid say, given that New York has weak ties to generation capacity in other states.

Citing safety concerns, Mr. Cuomo warned Indian Point’s owner, Entergy, last month that he would insist that the plant’s two reactors in Westchester County be retired in 2013 and 2015, when their initial 40-year licenses expire. He maintains that some combination of new generators and new transmission lines could be ready in time to cope with summer 2016, the first peak demand period that power-hungry New York City and Long Island would face without both reactors.

But industry experts are skeptical that new generators or transmission lines could be built that quickly in the New York metropolitan region’s cumbersome regulatory environment. Obtaining construction permits, countering legal challenges and then building a plant or transmission line almost always takes more than five years, they note.

While a downstate coal or natural gas plant could step up production once Indian Point closed, that electricity could prove far more expensive, industry analysts say. And a lighting strike or other event that knocks out a transmission line — a problem that the system can usually ride through today — could lead to rotating blackouts, they add.

“The answer is pretty simple: prices will be higher and reliability will be lower,” said Edward Kee, vice president of the firm NERA Economic Consulting.

Up to 2.1 million customers in southern New York would be vulnerable to power interruptions from 2016 to 2020 if Indian Point shut down, Rick Gonzales, chief operating officer of the New York Independent System Operator, or I.S.O., told a State Senate committee in May.

Officials at the I.S.O., which runs the state’s grid, estimate that Westchester and New York’s five boroughs will use about 64,500 gigawatt-hours this year. Indian Point will generate about a quarter of that, or 16,000 gigawatt-hours.

If both Indian Point reactors were to close, wholesale electricity prices would rise about 12 percent, or $1.4 billion a year, according to a projection from Consolidated Edison, which serves more than three million customers in New York City and part of Westchester.

In New York’s daily energy auctions, the I.S.O. prices electricity by matching offering bids from suppliers against the amount of energy that utilities say they need to serve their customers. Nuclear plants always submit relatively low offers because their costs are the same whether they are running or not, and they want to be assured of having a market.

If Indian Point closes, the list of successful bidders will eventually include more plants fired by coal or natural gas. Their operating costs are higher and they will therefore bid higher, analysts say. And in a quirk of New York’s system, every supplier is paid at the price of the most expensive megawatt-hour needed to satisfy the region’s demand, which will magnify the rise in prices.

The price impact would be smaller if the state added some low-cost generation or transmission. So far, Mr. Cuomo has not been specific about where substitute power would come from, but aides say proposals are certain to emerge, now that he has taken a hard line on closing Indian Point.

“We recognize the window is relatively short,” said an aide, referring to the time it takes to build plants and transmission capacity. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy has not been made final.

Some experts on New York’s electricity system suggest that existing transmission lines could be rebuilt to operate at higher voltage and thus provide more capacity. A proposal for a new line running from Quebec to New York City under Lake Champlain and the Hudson River is inching forward, for example, and sponsors say it could be completed by 2015.

Ashok Gupta, an energy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has suggested that some generators in northeastern Queens that run on natural gas could be replaced by newer ones that get more power out of a given amount of fuel. Such steps should be taken regardless of Indian Point’s fate, he and others contend.

“Everything we’re saying should be done if Indian Point should be shut down — should be done anyway,” he said, referring to proposals for cleaner and more efficient technology and new transmission lines.

The challenges facing electricity suppliers in New York are rooted partly in the way the system is administered. While New York City is in a densely populated region, it is only loosely tied to power generators in neighboring states. The city is served mainly by five big transmission lines that run from upstate New York, squeezing through the narrow stretch where Westchester is corseted by New Jersey and Connecticut to deliver a mix of power from energy sources in Quebec, Ontario and upstate.

By contrast, the six New England states have been integrated for decades into a single system, which gives each far more flexibility in balancing supply and demand in peak periods. From New Jersey southward, PJM Interconnection — the letters once stood for Pennsylvania, Jersey and Maryland — manages supply and demand for all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Even in New York State, connections are weak, further limiting options. “New York’s grid is a patchwork,” said Mr. Gonzales of the I.S.O., which keeps a round-the-clock watch on how heavily the state’s power lines are loaded. The agency divides the state into 11 zones mimicking the former territories of utilities, and it prices electricity separately in each one because of the weak way they are interconnected.

As a result, some parts of the system are highly congested, and power in those places can sell for double what it does in better-connected areas with strong generation like northern New York. In a region that stretches from south of Albany down through Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Rockland and Westchester Counties, the five boroughs and Long Island, prices are sometimes double what they are in upstate or western New York.

Sometimes wind turbines upstate generate electricity for which there is no local market, but the energy cannot be delivered to the New York area because of congestion on the grid. Wind power could one day help replace Indian Point, experts say, but not without more transmission capacity.

Yet construction of new lines or new plants tends to stir enormous opposition, industry experts say. Paul Steidler, a spokesman for an energy lobbying group largely financed by Indian Point’s owner, pointed to NYRI, a proposed 190-mile high-voltage link between upstate and downstate that was shelved in 2009 after major objections from people in areas it would pass through.

“Based on the NYRI experience, I do not think it is possible to underestimate the amount of opposition that the Champlain line will face,” Mr. Steidler said. “We shouldn’t count on it until it is up and running and all the lawsuits are resolved.”

Power plant construction in the New York City area faces yet another hurdle: because the air already violates the smog standard, for each ton of nitrogen oxides that any new power plant would emit, the Environmental Protection Agency requires the builder to cut output of that pollutant from another source by 1.3 tons. That means a developer wanting to build a new plant has to find another plant to clean up.

Closing the Indian Point reactors would, however, hardly be gloom and doom for everyone. Any company that runs a generator in downstate New York ends up selling its output at a higher price, and would share in the $1.4 billion a year that Con Edison says its customers will pay if the nuclear plant closes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/nyregion/closing-indian-point-plant-has-risks-experts-warn.html?_r=1&src=rechp

New York relying much less on Indian Point for energy

New York relying much less on Indian Point for energy

TUESDAY, 07 DECEMBER 2010 09:49

BY ROGER WITHERSPOON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Entergy Nuclear has dropped its share of electricity supporting New York City and Westchester County to about 4 percent of the area's power needs while selling increasing portions of its juice in an open market stretching from Maine to Delaware.

The company is spending millions of dollars on an extensive campaign to convince the public that the region would suffer if the nuclear plants at Indian Point were shut and its 2,100 megawatts were withdrawn. Simultaneously, however, Entergy is withdrawing all but 560 megawatts and is selling the rest elsewhere through the interconnecting New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Quebec and Ontario power grids.

In its search for the highest profit margins, industry analysts and power operators say Entergy may well opt to sell nearly all of its electricity from Indian Point 2 and 3 in Buchanan to customers outside the New York City/Westchester County service area. And because of the success of the wholesale power markets and transmission networks run by the non-profit Independent System Operators, the absence of Indian Point's megawatts has no effect on the region's electricity needs or power system reliability.

"Whether or not Entergy is going to phase out of New York City and Westchester entirely is an open question," said Justin McCann, senior industry analyst for Standard & Poor's Equity Markets. "If you look at Gov. Cuomo, there is a hostile political environment, so there is going to be a tension here and how that is going to play out, I have no idea.

"But they will go wherever they see the best market."

Entergy bought the Indian Point 3 and James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plants from the New York Power Authority in 2000, and Indian Point 1 and 2 from Consolidated Edison in 2001. At that time, Con Ed was getting out of the power generating business and concentrating on being solely an electric transmission company. In that capacity, it delivers all of the electricity used in the New York City/Westchester section of the state's power grid. Con Ed's transmission lines carry some 9,000 to 13,000 megawatts of electricity during peak periods, with the highest usage occurring during the hottest days of summer. The 2000 megawatts provided by the twin reactors at Indian Point accounted for 22% of that energy mix in winter and 15 percent in the summer.

Under terms of the separate sale agreements, Entergy contracted to sell all of the power from Indian Point 2 to Con Ed, and all of the power from Indian Point 3 to NYPA. But these contracts were not open ended. The power markets were deregulated in 1999, just a year before the sales occurred, and how well the networked wholesale markets would work was still more theory than fact. Locking up Indian Point's electricity at a set price point for at least five years was deemed a prudent measure for Con Ed and NYPA to take as the free market system evolved.

Entergy's contract with Con Ed required Indian Point 2 to provide 1,000 megawatts through 2009. The output fell to 875 megawatts through 2010, and drops further to 360 Megawatts for 2011 and 2012, according to Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert and the company's 2010 Annual Report.

NYPA's contract with Entergy for 2009 through 2013 secures just 100 megawatts from Indian Point 3 and 100 from Indian Point 2. The current contracts with NYPA and Con Ed, therefore, drop Indian Point's contribution to the region's electricity needs to just 6.2 percent in winter and 4.3 percent in the summer.

For NYPA, replacing that drop of 800 megawatts was not an obstacle, said spokesperson Connie M. Cullen.

"It was not difficult," Cullen said. "NYPA follows an established procurement process where we issue a request for proposals from electricity suppliers, receive bids, evaluate them, and then enter contracts. It is a well established process."

It needs to be.

Both NYPA and Con Ed purchase power wholesale and then sell it to residential, business and municipal customers. NYPA, which has its own hydro electric plants upstate, provides some 2015 megawatts of power to the region daily. According to NYPA, that breaks down to 115 megawatts for Westchester County municipal customers, government buildings, and Westchester airport; and 1,900 megawatts for New York City's government buildings and operations, the city Housing Authority, Metropolitan Transit Authority, state buildings, LaGuardia Airport, and the Jacob Javits Convention Center. JFK Airport has its own power generation.

Con Ed, on the other hand, has its own residential and non-government business customers, delivering 9,000 to 11,000 megawatts to some 345,000 Westchester and 2.8 million New York City residents.

Entergy's individual contracts are not a matter of public record and the company may be selling electricity to large clients in this region. But their contention that it is the electricity from Indian Point which keeps the subways running, La Guardia Airport operating, and the lights on at City Hall are no longer valid.

The disclosure that Entergy has quietly shifted its electricity elsewhere prompted an angry response from Gary Shaw of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, which is comprised of several non-profit organizations seeking to block relicensing of the plants.

"We have known for a long time that Entergy has no credibility," said Shaw. "But this new revelation is a factual contradiction of their contention that Indian Point's output is vital to our region.

"Indian Point represents a nuclear risk to the residents of this area while supplying only a small fraction of its electricity needs. We would be foolhardy to give it another 20 years to operate in our backyard when we are getting so little benefit."

Kenneth Klapp, spokesman for the New York ISO, said large power generators like Entergy have two options for their product. "They can sell electricity in the wholesale markets we operate," Klapp explained, "or bilaterally by themselves to a load serving entity — which is a transmission company like Con Edison or a large individual customer.

"In New York State, 50% of the energy sold is bilaterally through contracts and the other half goes to either of the two markets we operate: the day-ahead market, which gets the majority of the traffic; and the real time, spot market which is dispatched every five minutes. We have 300 market participants in New York. But providers like Entergy can bid into other markets as well."

By participating in the New York ISO, Indian Point is in an expanded marketplace provided by the ISO New England, Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland ISO, the Ontario ISO and the Quebec Provincial Utility.

In the current, volatile energy marketplace there are good reasons for Entergy to shop around. Standard & Poor's McCann said "the spot market at this time is weak. If you look at the market now for next July, the prices are between $47 and $48 dollars a megawatt/hour. And the prices will be lower in 2011.

"But Entergy has contracts for 90% of their output through the end of this year and throughout 2011 at $57 per megawatt hour. For 2012 they have already contracted 76% of their output at $50; for 2013 they have sold 31% at $49; for 2014 and 2015 they have sold 25% at $51. It is prudent for them to lock in prices at this time."

It is equally prudent for Con Edison and NYPA to reduce their dependency on Indian Point's electricity at a time when their nuclear plant operating licenses are expiring and their long term future is still not decided.

Part of the reason the electricity from Indian Point has been considered so vital to the New York City /Westchester electric infrastructure is due to widespread misunderstanding of the term "baseload electricity." The use of that term by nuclear industry proponents usually implies that it is an essential foundation on which regional electricity needs are built. That is not the case.

"We have three classifications of electricity providers," said Ellen Foley, spokeswoman for ISO New England, which includes Entergy's Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim nuclear plants in its energy mix. "Baseload plants typically run all of the time. Intermediate plants can go on and off, or increase and decrease their power in a short period of time. The peak units can be turned on or off in 10 minutes and are used — as their name implies — in periods of very high demand.

"It can take a couple of days to power up a nuclear plant. If that changed, and they had more flexibility and could power up and down in a short time, they would be considered intermediate just like hydro or natural gas."

Nuclear power is considered baseload because, when compared to other forms of power generation, they have an inferior on/off switch.

Since they have to operate at full capacity, Foley said, "Typically what they will do is sell their output through contractual arrangements to stay on line at their maximum level. With Vermont Yankee, there is no way to know how much of their power stays in Vermont and how much goes elsewhere. More than likely, they are running and selling their power throughout New England."

While the market place is wide open and constantly evolving, some things do not change.

"Entergy can sell electricity wherever there is a buyer," said McCann, "but it cannot produce it wherever it wishes to. Physically, they are here. These people will negotiate for every nickel and dime, but I can't see them abandoning Indian Point."

Electricity Fact Sheet

Q: How much electricity do Indian Point 2 and 3 produce?

A: According to Entergy's annual report for calendar year 2009, Indian Point 2 produces 1,028 megawatts of electricity and Indian Point 3 produces 1,041 megawatts.

Q: How much electricity is used in the New York City / Westchester County service area of the NY State power grid?

A: New York City and Westchester County use 9,000 to about 13,000 megawatts of electricity during peak periods daily, according to Consolidated Edison, which transmits all of the electricity. The lowest use is in the winter, the highest in the summer.

Q: What percentage of the area's electrical needs was met by Indian Point when it sold all of its power to Con Ed and NYPA?

A: The percentage ranged from about 22% in the winter to 15% in the summer.

Q: What percentage of the area's electrical needs is met by Indian Point now?

A: The 560 megawatts contracted to Con Ed and NYPA amount to 6.2% in the winter and 4.3% in the summer.

Q: Entergy claims Indian Point provides up to 40% of the electricity used in the New York City/ Westchester County grid. How do they arrive at that figure?

A: Energy use is based on the peak, or maximum load of the day when people are actually using electricity. For Entergy's 40% claim to be accurate,electricity usage in New York City and Westchester would have to fall to only 5,000 megawatts.
Con Ed reports that the energy load drops to that level between 3 AM and 5 AM, Sunday mornings, about three times in the late spring and three times in the early fall when it is too cool for air conditioning, too warm for electric heaters, and the city sleeps. During those isolated periods the 2,000 megawatts from Indian Point - if it were all used in the region - would comprise 40%.

Q: Is it legitimate to use the exception - when everyone sleeps - to calculate Indian Point's value to the regional power grid?

A: No. The industry's buyers and providers base their contracts on maximum projected electricity use, not the occasional exceptional circumstance.
If it were legitimate to use the exception, when most electrical systems were turned off, it would also be legitimate to claim that the most consistent power source in the region is the Eveready Bunny, whose batteries powered flashlights throughout the New York City/ Westchester County grid during the 2003 Blackout.

State and Local Power Distribution

Q: How much electricity is generated in New York state?

A: According to the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the power grid, total electric power generation in the state is 37,416 Megawatts transmitted over 10,877 miles of high voltage lines.

Q: How much electricity is generated in the New York City/ Westchester power section of the grid?

A: The NY ISO reports there are 11,087 Megawatts of generating capacity in this region.

Q: What were the peak electric load forecasts for 2009 and this year?

A: The NY ISO reported the projected peak usage for 2009 was 33,425 Megawatts though the actual peak reached just 30,844 Megawatts. The projected peak this year was 33,025 Megawatts.

Q: How has the price of electricity changed in the wholesale marketplace?

A: The average annual cost of electricity in 2008 was $95.31 per megawatt/hour. In 2009, the average annual cost of electricity was $48.63 per megawatt/hour.

Q: How does the cost of natural gas affect the price of electricity generated by nuclear power?

A: Natural gas sets the market price in the day-ahead and spot markets, which are calculated every 5 minutes. Nuclear power comes in at a lower cost than natural gas and the difference is the profit earned by the nuclear operator.

Q: How much of the electricity generated in New York is sold in the markets and how much is sold under long-term contracts?

A: About half the electricity generated in New York is sold under long term contracts to distributors such as Con Ed and NYPA, or to individual users like Fordham and New York Universities, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The remaining 50% is sold on either the day-ahead, or the spot markets.

Q: Must the electricity made in New York be sold to companies or distributers within New York?

A: No. The NY ISO is connected to ISO New England, the Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland ISO encompassing the Mid-Atlantic states and, in Canada, the Ontario ISO and the Quebec Provincial Utility. Electricity can be sold in the day-ahead and spot markets, or long term contracts made to clients throughout the network.

Q: What does Indian Point primarily rely on: long-term contracts or the markets?

A: According to an analysis by Standard & Poor's Entergy has contracts for 90% of Indian Point's electricity this year; 95% of its output in 2011, 76% of its output in 2012, 31% of its output in 2013, 25% of its output in 2014, and 15% of its output in 2015.

Locally, Indian Point is contracted to provide NYPA with 200 megawatts through 2013. It is contracted to provide Con Ed 875 megawatts through the end of 2010, and 360 megawatts through 2012.

Roger Witherspoon writes Energy Matters at www.RogerWitherspoon.com

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/new-york-relying-much-less-on-indian-point-for-energy