I encourage people to read “Shorting the Grid” in order to understand decision-making on our modern grids. amazon.com/Shorting-Grid-Hid…

Yes, there's a new bridge that replaces the old Tappan Zee bridge. But I still call the new one "Tappan Zee." I don't use its official name of "Mario Cuomo Bridge." Cuomo killed Shoreham nuclear station and left Long Island dependent on cable connections and natural gas. The bridge will always be the Tappan Zee to me.

Famously anti-nuclear Vermont, which pressured the state's Vermont Yankee plant to close, is now considering building an SMR on the same site. The utility stresses that it will not build w/o local support. Article link in reply. Building new reactors at the site of a closed power plant (nuclear or fossil) can reduce cost, by making use of infrastructure that remains (grid connections, etc..). Political support for nuclear is growing in Vermont. The current governor is pro-nuclear.

Long Island depends on imports for its electricity. Yes, I’m still sad about Shoreham. 🙁

One of the companies the New York Public Services Commission just revoked a license for is worth highlighting because of what it shows about the scam-ridden world of retail choice for electricity. These companies aren't utilities so utility critics and watchdog groups don't tend to shine any light on them. But thankfully the state does. In this case, the light was shining on scammers' use of falsely reporting people as having signed up for a retail choice provider while using AI and geolocation spoofing to circumvent the state's controls. Prime Time Marketing operated as a third-party energy broker and energy consultant for an energy services company (ESCO) called Verde -- a retail choice electricity provider. That means PTM handled the door-to-door marketing of Verde as an option that Con Edison customers in NYC could choose for their electricity supply. In New York a third-party verification system (TPV) is required by ESCOs and those who operate for them. It's how the state verifies that someone who signs up for retail choice 1) actually did so and 2) understands the basics of what the hell they just did. It uses a recorded voice phone call and geolocation to make sure it's really the customer. Otherwise scammers could be falsely signing people up for retail choice providers left and right. After Con Ed realized that Verde filed a bunch of new retail choice customers at an apartment where Con Ed had an existing customer, they suspected fake names were being enrolled. Turns out some of PTM's subcontracted door-to-door salespeople were falsifying customer enrollments by visiting the premises, for the location tracking, and then using AI voices to answer the TPV calls. The attached texts from PTM to a subcontractor employing these sales reps shows how PTM began to learn of the fraud -- the reps get paid per enrollment and so have the incentive to fake them -- and the subcontractor appears to recognize that "dereg" is a hustle that some people know and some people don't. The retail choice provider Verde appears to be evading any blame for this scheme, though PTM is now losing its license to operate on behalf of retail choice providers again, unless it appeals successfully. Read the state's allegations against the fraudsters of retail choice here: documents.dps.ny.gov/public/…

Operational alerts like PJM's-recalling outages and invoking emergency demand response-are clear signals of systemic grid fragility under extreme weather. For utility leadership, the takeaway isn't just about surviving winter peaks; it's about impending regulatory scrutiny around reserve adequacy and grid hardening. Traditional 24-hour day-ahead forecasting is no longer enough to manage compounding operational risks. The future of grid resilience depends on granular, real-time visibility across generation availability, localized transfer constraints, and automated demand-side dispatch before RTOs are forced into emergency procedures.

Lessons to learn from this in GB and Europe too...

Excellent explanation of the growing fragility of our grids. Slighty-warm weather can lead to emergencies that use to be caused only by blizzards and hurricanes. piped.video/watch?v=2dvO-QKr…

Can Force Majeure be Cured? I may have been too optimistic about the possibilities for the NECEC line from Canada to Maine. meredithangwin.substack.com/…

blackmon.substack.com/p/eid-… How to sue energy companies. Experts in this field move their operations to Vermont. Excellent research in this post about the move.

October 6, 2026 Elizabeth Brown talks about the idea of nuclear power returning to Vermont. (Yeah, she talks with me.) podcast.show/3955816/october…

⚛️ THE TRADES JUST DROPPED A NY-DSA LAWMAKER OVER NUCLEAR AND UTILITY TAKEOVER BILL ⚛️ Sept 24: @sarahana signs a letter opposing any state support for new nuclear plants in New York. Sept 28: The Hudson Valley Building & Construction Trades Council endorses her for Assembly. Oct 5: The trades pull it. "Assemblywoman Shrestha... recently opposed the build-out of nuclear energy in New York. HVBCTC cannot support that position. Nuclear energy projects create union jobs and a more reliable energy grid for New Yorkers." They also cited her push to take over Central Hudson, after talks with IBEW Local 320, which represents the utility's workers. Her takeover bill directs the new authority to pursue 100% renewable electricity by 2040 and orders a study to phase out the gas system serving about 90,000 Hudson Valley homes and businesses. She's said the takeover is about more than the Hudson Valley. On "Pod Damn America" in March: "If it happens here, that is definitely going to result in a domino effect." She's been pitching it in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Rochester, alongside NYC Council Member Chi Ossé, to Con Ed, National Grid and RG&E customers.

energysecurityfreedom.substa… Fast moving video. About 40 minutes. I always enjoy talking with Stu Turley. 😊

On October 27, 1904, New York opened its first subway. The power came from a new plant filling the block between 58th and 59th Streets, from Eleventh to Twelfth Avenue. McKim, Mead & White designed it, and coal fed the boilers that drove the generators for the IRT. It's still working. The subway ran on its power until 1959, when Con Edison took the plant over for its steam system, the network of pipes under Manhattan that heats and cools buildings. Two of its biggest boilers kept making 25-cycle electricity, the frequency of the original subway, until 1996, when they were converted to steam only. In 2024, Con Ed's steam system served 1,496 customer locations, roughly 1,500 Manhattan buildings. The station is one of the plants that keeps them warm. The fuel has changed along the way. It was built to burn coal and later moved to oil. Today it runs about 99% on natural gas, with a little oil as backup for the coldest days. Con Ed is now planning a $50 million electric boiler at its sister plant on 74th Street. This isn't a museum. Con Ed's 2025 steam rate filing budgets new equipment at what it now calls the "59th Street Steam Generating Station." The city made the building a landmark in 2017, after a fight that started in 1979. By then it had been doing its job for 113 years. New York often talks about energy infrastructure as if it has a shelf life. But this plant has outlived the coal it was built for, the trains it powered and the electrical frequency it ran on. It's still working because people kept maintaining it and adapting it, and kept it in service.

Who's buying New York's power plants? And what do they know that Albany doesn't? New York's climate law says every one of these plants has to be gone by 2040. The Public Service Commission's own planning order, last September, warned utilities about "the risk of stranded assets." The City of New York told the PSC that rebuilding gas infrastructure "risks … creating stranded assets." Albany's whole strategy rests on the idea that fossil infrastructure is a dying investment. So why, in the last fifteen months, have 22 New York power plants changed hands? 7.4 gigawatts, four times the normal pace, and why is nobody saying what they paid? A Swiss private-equity giant, Partners Group of Zug, bought Roseton and five small upstate plants under the brand "PowerTransitions," with a fourth deal pending for Indeck's four. Its stated plan: "powered land sites for data centers." A Korean brokerage, Kiwoom Securities, ended up owning Cricket Valley, the state's newest gas plant, by swapping $326 million of debt for the keys. A Houston fund, Rockland Capital, has quietly assembled Bowline, Carr Street, Empire Generating, Lockport and Castleton-on-Hudson: by its own count more than 5% of the entire New York grid. NRG took Ravenswood, the biggest plant in the city. Then the money behind the money. Canada's national pension plan put $1 billion into ArcLight, owner of Arthur Kill, Oswego Harbor and Bethlehem. New York's own pension fund is the biggest investor in the fund that just bought the Far Rockaway peakers. A sitting director of KKR is personally buying into the company that just sold Roseton. And DigitalBridge, a data-center firm being acquired by SoftBank, is paying up to $1.05 billion for ArcLight itself, which would put Astoria, Gowanus and Narrows under a CEO who says "AI is rewiring the global power equation." Beaver Falls and Solvay sold in October 2025 and again in September 2026. Athens has sold three times since 2020. Roseton's buyer told the PSC there would be "no changes in the day-to-day operations" and told investors it was building "a multi-use energy campus at scale." Not one of these twelve deals discloses a price for a New York plant. Capacity prices in New York City hit a record this summer, more than double last year's. Either the smartest money in the world is wrong about New York's energy future, or Albany is. Why are these plants changing hands, and why now?

Stu Turley of Energy News Beat interviewed me recently. His title was "Why Policy is Breaking Physics." Stu always has both facts and humor in his interviews. Here's the youtube version. piped.video/watch?v=4PpEziru…

Three years later, the horror of October 7 still weighs heavily on our hearts. We remember every life taken by Hamas, the survivors and families forever changed, and Jewish communities in Massachusetts and around the world who continue to carry the pain of that day. May their memories be a blessing. May we honor them by standing together against antisemitism and hate.

"One project alone [the Champlain Hudson Power Express] could provide 1,000 megawatts of hydropower – 50 percent of Indian Point's capacity – and that project has all its approvals." - Paul Gallay, Riverkeeper president, January 2017 Yesterday, CHPE delivered zero. It wasn't an outage. NYISO listed the line as available at its full 1,250 MW for all 24 hours, and Hydro-Québec scheduled nothing across it. The last time that happened was July 28. The drop came fast: CHPE carried 15–20 GWh a day from Sept 28 to Oct 1, then 7.6 GWh on Oct 2, about 3 GWh on Oct 3 and 4, and nothing on Oct 5. Is that allowed? Yes. Hydro-Québec's contract with NYSERDA has no daily or hourly delivery requirement. According to the PSC order approving it: The only floor is seasonal. Hydro-Québec has to deliver 40% of its promised annual amount in each six-month period. That floor isn't enforced yet. It's measured over three seasons and doesn't start counting until the third, so the first real test is around summer 2027. Outages shrink it. It's reduced whenever the line is down, and for curtailment and force majeure. Hydro-Québec is paid only for what arrives. A zero day costs ratepayers nothing, and also delivers nothing. The promise was much bigger than the floor. Hydro-Québec bid 10.4 TWh a year. When the PSC approved the contract, it said that number showed the "objective to fill the CHPE line to maximum capacity for 95% of the year." Since June 1, CHPE has delivered 0.68 TWh, about 19% of that pace. Over the entire day: New York used 378 GWh. Gas supplied 36%, nuclear 20%, hydro 18%, solar 9%, wind 9% and imports 8%. Demand peaked at 18.0 GW at noon, and NYC's highest-priced hour hit $97/MWh.

On Oct. 2, New York City hit 85 degrees. A year earlier on the same date it was 66. Air conditioners came back on, and statewide demand climbed to 21.1 GW at 3 PM. The state used 431 GWh, 15% more than the same day last year and the most since mid-September's heat. The sun was in the wrong place. It was sunny downstate, where the heat was. But about two-thirds of New York's solar panels are upstate, and upstate was overcast: Syracuse saw zero hours of sunshine. Statewide solar peaked at about 2.4 GW around midday, roughly a third of what's installed. And the sun left before the heat did. Solar was already fading at the 3 PM peak (1.9 GW), was down to 0.5 GW by 5 PM and was essentially gone by 6 PM. Demand was still above 20 GW. So what carried New York? Gas: 47% of the power at the peak hour, and 48% across the day. Solar managed 9% at the peak and 4% for the day. None of this was a crisis. It was an ordinary October afternoon with a little extra heat. That's the point: on an ordinary day, when an import line runs light and the clouds sit over the wrong half of the state, the grid leans on gas. A system built on weather-dependent supply and just-in-time imports has to keep a fossil backstop on standby for days exactly like this.

We are in Utility Dive talking about NYPA's public solar: utilitydive.com/news/nypa-24…

Today in "Watch Out For Bad Incentives": New England exports ~1 GW to Quebec while importing ~1 GW back on a subsidized line (NECEC), as New York exports ~1 GW to Quebec while importing ~1 GW back on a subsidized line (CPHE).