It takes a lot of power to run the city that never sleeps, and Con Edison is up to the challenge.
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What will it take to continue powering the city that never sleeps?
Patrick McHough, Senior Vice President of Electric Operations chimes in, “So we have some people that like never even experienced a power outage. You know, I mean powering New York City is a challenging job. We have over eight million people who live and work in the city of New York. And the only way that that happens is with the use of electricity. The electricity that powers the trains that powers the elevators the powers of traffic lights that powers the restaurants all that is possible with electricity and without it. We could not live in the city that we do.”
But now energy providers are faced with an enormous challenge: climate change, older infrastructure just wasn't built to withstand the kinds of extreme weather the city experiences today. You might be asking yourself:
How is powering NYC going to change in response to climate change and extreme weather?
“We are making Investments to allow our grid to be better prepared to handle longer heat waves. On top of that we're anticipating more overhead windstorms.
We have recently acquired over a hundred vehicles (overhead bucket trucks) so that we can fly in Crews to be ready to respond to overhead events.”
But fortifying the system is only one piece of the plan for powering NYC well into the future to keep the effects of climate change manageable emissions have to go down. Con Edison has a plan to achieve 100% clean energy by 2040.
Currently approximately 85% of NYC's energy comes from fossil fuels by comparison, Upstate New York is already 88% powered by Clean Energy. One major reason for the difference is not enough transmission lines to bring in clean energy from outside the city.
“Renewable resources take a lot of space to produce energy. And therefore there is a need to be able to transmit that energy from regions that you can put this equipment to the urban area of
New York City. More transmission lines capable of bringing in power from clean energy sources means the city will be able to rely less on gas turbines to generate electricity and get closer to truly clean energy production. And to even further reduce Reliance on gas the city's buildings need to be electrified. Almost 70% of NYC's total greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings; less than 5% of the city's buildings are responsible for half of that.
“We currently have a very large program of over 500 million dollars to incentivize customers to convert to electric heat pumps and electric hot water heaters” , mentions Patrick McHough. And as buildings, cars and appliances get electrified the cities already have high demand for electricity is going to increase.
Are clean energy sources like renewables up to the task?
Con Edison plans to harness 7,000 megawatts of wind power off the coast of Long Island. That's seven nuclear power plants worth of energy with no greenhouse gas side effects. Together approximately 60 million megawatt hours of electricity are expected from their solar and wind facilities over the next five years. To put this into perspective the subway uses about 1.8 million megawatt hours of energy in a year making con Edison's projected five-year production of wind and solar enough to fully power the entire NYC subway system more than six times over. Keeping the lights on in New York City. There's no small feat. Con Edison's goal of 100% clean energy by 2040 is right around the corner and by ensuring that people have access to safe, reliable energy. They're preserving the magic of New York City for years to come.
Learn more about our long range plans for a clean future: [ Ссылка ]
