LIPA warns of power shortages on Long Island, N.Y.

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LIPA warns of power shortages on Long Island, N.Y. Thursday July 26, 4:43 PM EDT

NEW YORK, July 26 (Reuters) - The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), which serves 1.1 million customers in neighborhoods from Queens, New York City, to Montauk, warned on Thursday of possible blackouts in the future after narrowly averting outages during a two-day heat wave this week.

LIPA Chairman Richard Kessel said in a statement that yesterday's record electricity demand came perilously close to tapping out the state-owned utility's power supplies.

"Our energy supply on Long Island for this summer is tight. If we don't increase available resources significantly by next summer, we'll have an energy supply shortage that could mean rolling blackouts during sustained heat waves," Kessel warned.

LIPA delivered 4,614 megawatts (MW) of electricity to customers during the peak hour on Wednesday with temperatures hitting a high of 90 degrees Fahrenheit (36 C).

The previous record of 4,590 MW was set on July 6, 1999, on the fifth day of a sustained heat wave when temperatures reached 102 F (39 C).

Some 4,600 MW were available during Wednesday's peak to meet demand, leaving a supply cushion of only 150 MW between LIPA's supplies and its customers' demand. One megawatt of electricity provides enough power for about 1,000 average homes.

But at one point, LIPA had less than 100 MW of supply to meet projected demand later in the day.

Had demand not been reduced through conservation, LIPA said it would have had to initiate emergency measures like running equipment at higher than normal conditions, ordering the use of privately-owned generators and voltage reductions.

"We appealed to the public to conserve as much as possible. And for the first time we implemented our LIPAedge program, which allowed us to reduce energy consumption on some 2,500 central home air conditioning units late yesterday afternoon via the Internet," Kessel said.

"Demand came very close to reaching the limits of yesterday's electric supply," Kessel said.

BLACKOUTS POSSIBLE IN THE FUTURE

Kessel noted that a sustained multi-day event similar to the July 1999 heat storm would have produced even higher electric demand on Long Island.

Had Long Island experienced the same 102 degree Fahrenheit temperature and high humidity of July 1999 yesterday, Kessel said the aggregate demand could have soared to 5,025 MW, which would have exceeded LIPA's supply by 425 MW.

In the near future, weather forecasters are now predicting a three-day heat wave for late next week (August 1-3) that will blanket the entire eastern-half of the U.S.

"Our backs are not quite to the wall yet," Lowndes said, adding the utility still had a few untapped options Wednesday it could have used to avert rolling blackouts.

Some of those options include calling on emergency power supplies, interrupting power to commercial customers who buy power at reduced rates knowing they might have their service cut when supplies are tight, asking government offices to shut early for the day, and reducing voltage on the system.

Kessel said LIPA will take several steps to accelerate energy conservation and efficiency efforts and review plans to repower existing generation, approve a transmission cable across Long Island Sound and build several additional turbines for next summer.

"Conservation and energy efficiency can help reduce demand on critical days," said Kessel.

"But when demand skyrockets ... as it did yesterday morning, it's easy to understand that conservation and energy efficiency alone will not keep the lights on during a heat wave," Kessel said.

http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&news_id=reu-n26189088&feed=reu&date=20010726&cat=INDUSTRY

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 26, 2001


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