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Week of March 23, 2008
About NYPA Notes

NYPA Notes provides periodic updates on the New York Power Authority's statewide activities to stimulate economic growth, promote energy conservation and develop new, environmentally friendly energy technologies.

It also reports on the Authority's efforts to facilitate solutions to New York's energy problems and on its potential benefits to the state as the electricity industry shifts from regulation to competition.

Please feel free to reprint any of the information in NYPA Notes. We hope you find the newsletter informative and useful and would welcome your comments and inquiries (nancy.ames@nypa.gov)
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NYPA Calendar

 March 25: The Power Authority Board of Trustees will meet at 11 a.m. March 25 at NYPA’s office at 123 Main St., White Plains.
ALBANY: Renewable Energy Panel Makes Recommendations— The New York State Renewable Energy Task Force has issued recommendations to help increase the use of renewable energy in the state, toward the goal of having renewables provide 25 percent of the total electricity used by 2013. New York could become “a model for best practices for meeting ambitious renewable energy goals,” said NYPA President and CEO Roger Kelley, a task force member. The recommendations include: developing more than 100 megawatts of solar photovoltaic generation by 2011—eight times today’s level; fully funding the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard to create market certainty for private developers to contribute to the 25 percent goal; development of new business incentives to attract renewable technology companies to build industry clusters in solar, wind, biomass and other technical areas; encouraging on-site renewable energy generation, delivering excess power back to the energy grid; and developing a “green collar” work force to support technology companies by coordinating training programs and providing training for disadvantaged communities and minority- and women-owned companies. NYPA will expand its existing renewable energy programs, particularly in solar photovoltaic technologies and other forms of on-site renewable energy generation, as well as its energy-efficiency programs.

WHITE PLAINS: Power Authority Starts Recruitment Website— The Power Authority has launched a new recruitment website in response to the growing shortage of entry-level and experienced personnel in engineering and other disciplines—a major challenge facing the nation’s electric utility industry. The Careers@NYPA  website is designed to provide potential applicants with a one-stop resource containing detailed information about NYPA. With the state’s current and future energy needs a critical concern, NYPA must compete with other utilities for qualified employees in a variety of technical, professional and administrative fields. The website was developed in-house as just one element of a multifaceted NYPA recruitment campaign. To view the Careers@NYPA website, which includes an updated list of positions now available, visit www.NYPA.gov/careers , or the main NYPA website at www.nypa.gov.

ALBANY: NYPA’s Low-Cost Power Helps Retain Metals Firm— Low-cost Power Authority electricity will help retain an Albany County metal-cutting services company that was poised to relocate some of its operations out of state. NYPA trustees have approved an allocation of 150 kilowatts of hydropower from the Power Authority’s Niagara Power Project to the Green Island Power Authority. This will support plans by Arcadia Supply to move one of its two Albany facilities to Green Island to obtain additional manufacturing space and expand its business. Arcadia plans to add 15 jobs to the relocated operations and invest $4 million in a new building and equipment. Those jobs will be in addition to the 38 existing jobs it will move to the new plant from Albany. The new facility in Green Island will have four times the manufacturing space as the Albany plant. The company had considered alternate locations in Florida and Ohio.

WHEATFIELD—Printing Company Expands With NYPA’s Help—A Niagara County printing service company that is investing $900,000 to expand and upgrade its product line will receive an allocation of 130 kilowatts of low-cost hydropower from the Power Authority’s Niagara Power Project. Shipman Printing Industries in Wheatfield, which currently employs 35, will create five new positions as it uses the additional power to upgrade its existing commercial press with an ultraviolet drying system, a favorite among printers, and replaces its existing web press with a new model for higher quality and efficiency. The Western New York Advisory Group, consisting of the Power Authority, National Grid, Empire State Development Corp., the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise and the Niagara County Center for Economic Development, recommended the power allocation to Shipman.

WHITE PLAINS: NYPA Earns Technology Transfer Award— The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has named the Power Authority as a winner in its annual Technology Transfer Awards, which recognizes leadership and innovation at electric utilities around the world. NYPA was one of 13 winners selected from 33 nominees in EPRI’s Power Delivery and Utilization Sector. With EPRI, NYPA developed a Probabilistic Reliability Risk Assessment (PRA) software to perform a reliability assessment of the New York State power system. In today’s restructured power industry, many transmission systems are stressed to their limits to accommodate increasing power transfers, and maintaining their reliability is becoming more challenging. Weak points, if undetected, may lead to costly outages and trigger cascading failures that affect large regions. PRA measures the likelihood of undesirable events against their severity or impact, allowing consideration of tradeoffs between the likelihood of an occurrence and the cost of mitigation. The PRA study provided NYPA planners with charts, tables and maps that enable a more effective visualization of complex reliability information. EPRI and NYPA are planning additional studies that will include detailed input from Consolidated Edison and the Long Island Power Authority. NYPA expects the technology will help establish priorities for future upgrades and expansions of transmission projects by balancing reliability and risk.