| It's been a while since anyone's heard from NYRI, the New York Regional Interconnect company that wanted to drop a big new power line across New York State to carry power Downstate. Local opposition was strong enough that Governor Pataki signed a 2006 bill limiting their possible use of eminent domain and their application seemed to vanish in the downturn. (Their web site still exists.) The federal government, of course, went ahead and created national sacrifice corridors I mean National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors meant to protect such projects from mere local or regional opposition.
Today, I see on the Google blog and in the New York Times that there's a new plan, far more ambitious at $5 billion than NYRI's $1.6 billion proposal, that would put a power line offshore. It doesn't just serve New York - it extends from New York, NY to Norfolk, VA, though the original connections would be to New Jersey and Delaware.
It's meant as a "transmission backbone" for 6,000 MW of offshore wind turbine capacity, five times NYRI's capacity. NYRI billed itself as a way to get green energy from Upstate to Downstate, but there was no real promise the power used would be green. This also seems to run on the promise of green energy, though the Times notes that.
even before any wind farms were built, the cable would channel existing supplies of electricity from southern Virginia, where it is cheap, to northern New Jersey, where it is costly, bypassing one of the most congested parts of the North American electric grid while lowering energy costs for northern customers.
Perhaps Downstate doesn't need Upstate the same way it used to? And those of us Upstate can maybe breathe a sigh of relief about that? |
