A new scale: $11 billion transmission project to NYC

As seen with Hurricane Sandy and recent summer heat waves, New York City’s power supply is less resilient than needed to serve the local population. And what’s hidden behind the scene is that most of the power for Manhattan is still traditional carbon-based power supply.

In 2019, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced a plan to change the resilience and carbon footprint for NYC’s power supply and sent out a RFP to the power / energy community to develop a plan to meet these goals.

Well earlier this week NYSERDA announced the winners of the plan and the figures are pretty astounding. Here is a quick summary:

• Invenergy (an Energize anchor LP) won the development proposal with an $11 billion plan
• The proposal will deliver over 7.5 GWh of renewable energy to NYC each year
• The project combines a 1,300-megawatt, 174-mile underground high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission, and the final part of the project will be tunneled under the Hudson River(!)
• 3.4GW of new wind and solar projects in upstate New York
• This investment in New York will deliver 8,300 clean energy and construction jobs exclusively in the state

Any way you cut it, this is a sizable infrastructure investment and is a big win for New York. These types of projects rely upon immense collaboration and capital. The scale of the project is also going to necessitate new digital tools to better plan, build and maintain these new, distributed energy assets.

This project is a great example of our new energy future: traditionally remote /rural renewable assets require a heavy investment in transmission to deliver the renewable power to urban areas. If done properly, this intermittent power supply can be coupled with more local energy storage applications to deliver a more resilient and renewable power supply. I am looking forward to learning from this project and helping identify and support software solutions that help accomplish this lofty plan.