Power to the People, Right On*
Last week’s winter storm that moved up the Eastern seaboard brought heavy icing conditions to many regions across New York State. The storm hit Ulster County particularly hard. Ulster county experienced a “mass blackout” with more than 45,000 people losing power. As of the posting of this piece, thousands still remain without power several days later — during bitterly cold days, causing potentially dangerous situations for many.
The recent outage is an opportunity to assess how New York fares compared to the rest of the nation. Do we lose power more often than other places? How long does the average New Yorker lose power in any given year? Is extreme weather playing a role?
There’s not enough space to fully analyze every data point in one blog piece, but taking a look at one important category called the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) is a good place to start. The SAIDI measures the amount of time the average customer loses power over the course of a year. Using the data reported to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, I examined the length of power disruptions the average ratepayer or customer experienced over the year by service territory/utility company in New York.
In 2020, New Yorkers experienced fewer hours of disruptions than the national average. Overall, New Yorkers had an average of 6.8 hours of outages versus the national average of 8.2 hours (See the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Power Report, specifically Table 11.2).** Included in the data are outages as a result of major events, like tropical storms or hurricanes.
Overall, New Yorkers had an average of 6.8 hours of power outages in 2020 versus the national average of 8.2 hours.
But let’s break it down a little to get regional views. Like in other states, New Yorkers get their power from several different types of entities including, investor owned utilities, state authorities, or municipal entities depending on the region they live in. For instance, if you live in the Albany area the utility is Niagara Mohawk Power Coporation. However, in 2020, there is wide differences among utilities.***
On the one hand, the New Yorkers who experienced the greatest average number of hours of power interruptions was from the Orange and Rockland Utility region with nearly 20 hours of power interruptions over the course of 2020. The Orange and Rockland Utility was followed by Central Hudson and Gas (15.4 hours) and New York State Electric and Gas (11.2 hours). In 2020, these utilities exceeded the national average. On the other hand New Yorkers living in the territories of the Long Island Power Authority (1.3 hours)**** and Rochester Gas and Electric (2.1 hours) experienced fewer hours of power interruptions.
It could be that those regions with the greatest number of hours of power interruptions dealt with major storm events. For example, in the summer of 2020 Tropical Storm Isaias resulted in 900,000 homes losing power. In fact, if you exclude major events — like tropical or winter storms— from the analysis, the time an average New Yorker went without power is reduced dramatically in 2020 in every region. In 2020, Orange and Rockland Utility goes from 19.8 hours without power on average to 1.6 hours, which is lower than the national average (see the full chart below). New York fares better than the national average in both instances (6.8 hours with major events and 1.3 hours without compared to the national average of 8.2 hours with major events and 2 hours without).
Looking at the data from previous years illustrate similar increases potentially as a result of major weather events. For example, in 2017 average Rochester Gas and Electric customers experienced more than 24 hours of power disruptions — the most of any utility that year. That year, in the region Rochester Gas and Electric serves was hit with several storms, including wind storms. The storms caused more than 125,000 people there and in the neighboring region of New York State Electric and Gas in Western, New York to lose power from downed and damaged power lines. In 2018, strong winter storms in March knocked out power to nearly a half a million customers which was followed by another storm hitting many of the same customers resulting in many going a week without power in cold winter conditions. Those, and other storms that year, are likely why New Yorkers in the Central Hudson Gas and Electric (21 hours) region and New York State Electric and Gas (21 hours) region experienced the highest number of hours with outages (see the full chart below).
What the data suggest is that given the increased frequency and strength of storms, the relative resiliency of our electric grid — and whether it can withstand the barrage of storms and other weather events — is something that needs renewed focus. States should double down on burying transmission wires, hardening the system with upgrading utility poles and other flood protection measures, as well as developing new technologies such as microgrids. The recent outage in the middle of a bitterly cold winter is a important reminder that while we often take for granted that our lights will always turn on, our smart phones can always be charged, or our home heating systems will always kick on, we must continue to make improvements and investments to the system in order to avoid these situations from occurring.
Endnotes
*Apologies to John Lennon
**The U.S. Energy Information Administration measures SAIDI using the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard or “other” standards. For this piece I included both.
***For the purpose of this analysis I excluded the smaller municipal owned utilities given their smaller footprints.
****Additional analysis is needed for the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA). LIPA’s overall numbers are lower, but that could be because their provider Public Service Enterprise Group, who took over around 2014, could be reporting the data elsewhere.
