Inside of New York, there are two grids. //
There are two electric grids: the physical one and the policy one. For New Yorkers, these two grids have been working against each other for a long time. The result is electricity and infrastructure that is increasingly more expensive and less reliable. Understanding this, and demanding better policies, is the only way to fix the problems that our two grids are facing.
And there’s no more important place for people to learn about these issues than in the Hudson Valley, which has always been a bellwether for the nation’s infrastructure and energy issues. And so, last week, we hosted Meredith Angwin, a celebrated energy researcher, chemist and author of 2020’s Shorting the Grid, for an audience of about 30 residents, some of whom traveled from over two hours away for the talk at a historic church in Hurley, NY. //
Angwin’s first slide made the distinction the whole evening kept returning to: there is a physical grid and a policy grid, and almost everything you read in the newspaper or from politicians is about the policy grid. //
The fatal trifeca consists of an over-reliance on renewables that start and stop on their own schedule; backing them with just-in-time natural gas delivered by pipeline, where homes have priority over power plants; and counting on imports from neighbors who are usually having the same weather you are.
Norway halts exports to Britain when the reservoirs run low, she noted: “Every now and again Norway says: sorry. We don’t have it, so you can’t have it.”
On batteries, she pointed to our recent charging-mix work: New York’s batteries are not filled by wind and sun, because there isn’t remotely enough of either on the grid. They’re filled by the ordinary mix, with extra gas firing up on the margin, and lose energy on the round trip. //
We joined Angwin up front to answer: About half of the increase is fuel: when Indian Point’s 2,000 carbon-free megawatts closed in 2021, the void was filled not by “cheap renewables” but by two new gas plants, Cricket Valley and CPV Valley, which now run at 75–80 percent capacity factors, so Hudson Valley bills ride the gas market.
