ALBANY, New York — The owner of a fleet of Long Island fossil fuel power plants is exploring options to update those aging turbines.
National Grid Ventures is in the “conceptual” stage of that planning, said President Will Hazelip. The unregulated arm of the gas and electric utility owns more than 3,500 megawatts of fossil fuel power plants on Long Island.
Hazelip said other plants of this age — many built in the 1960s and 1970s — have been retired. But with growing electricity demand and delays in bringing offshore wind online, energy experts and state officials expect these generators to still be needed.
“We’re confident we can continue to maintain and operate them, but the risk does go up each year, and so we have done quite a bit of work to think about repowering,” Hazelip said. “We do have the ability to build new power generation at several of our sites while the existing power generation continues to operate.”
