It took an innovative approach to help relieve transmission congestion from Central New York to the Catskills without having to build new towers and power lines. The $54-million endeavor, called the Marcy-South Series Compensation Project, was developed by NYPA and New York State Electric and Gas to increase power flows by up to 440 megawatts. The Marcy-South project strengthens the state’s power grid, allowing for the retirement of aging generation plants without reducing service and relieving the bottleneck that prevents lower-cost electricity from reaching areas where the demand is greatest.

At the Robert Moses substation, which transmits St. Lawrence-FDR hydropower across the state, NYPA has created one of the most advanced transmission hubs in North America. The technology includes the Switchyard Automated Monitoring and Controls (SAMAC) system whose microprocessors dynamically adapt to changing conditions. Real-time information is communicated to system operators and to automated switchyard components for precision monitoring and control of electricity transmission. The SAMAC system even anticipates and/or mitigates equipment failures.

NYPA is planning to rebuild its 86-mile-long Moses-Adirondack transmission line. Visit our Smart Path webpage for detailed information on this transmission line project 

Dynamic Line Rating technology uses field instruments and software to track the transmission capacity of power lines. That capacity changes due to weather conditions: ambient temperature, wind speed, solar radiation, and humidity. Real-time information can be used to adjust conductors, resulting in a potential five-to-15 percent increase in capacity. This “hidden capacity” can be used to optimize power flows across the grid.

NYPA is applying dynamic ratings technologies along three major transmission corridors near its large hydroelectric plants: the 345-kV Niagara-Rochester line near the Niagara Power Project; the 345-kV Gilboa-Fraser line near the Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Project; and the 230-kV Moses-Willis-Plattsburgh line, near the St. Lawrence project.

Microgrids are small-scale, highly interconnected sets of generation sources and delivery lines which offer a manageable way to improve reliability and introduce renewable or high-efficiency sources of energy (e.g. rooftop solar or cogeneration) to the system. Increasingly, microgrids are a critical complement to the regional grid, improving efficiency, helping to reduce the load on the central grid, and serving as a backup in a serious power emergency like the one New York faced after Hurricane Sandy. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) plan calls for the wide implementation of microgrids throughout New York. The state already leads the Northeast in microgrid development, with 75 installations and 200 megawatts of capacity, and NYPA is facilitating their growth and system integration.