The New York Power Authority (NYPA) recently completed the installation of more than 250 smart meters throughout its statewide system of 16 generating facilities, more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines and 17 substations as part of its Smart Generation and Transmission strategic initiative.
Smart meters optimize efficiency, reliability and savings in digitally collecting and transmitting information that allows NYPA to accurately balance the generation of electricity with the real-time energy needs of its customers, ensuring the power grid is operating as intended. The upgraded meters provide greater redundancy and validation of energy measurements to system operators and enable greater flexibility to allow for future changes to the power system.
The installations support NYPA’s goal of becoming the nation’s first end‑to‑end digital utility through the digitization of all equipment and processes from the point of power generation through its delivery and will also enable NYPA to support the energy efficiency efforts of its customers.
“The upgrades to smart meters across NYPA’s generation and transmission fleet help improve reliability by providing us with more data and enhanced visibility of operations,” said Gil C. Quiniones, president and CEO of NYPA. “This is data that can be used by NYPA employees, our municipal and rural electric cooperative customers, the New York Independent System Operator and other enterprises to make the power system more accurate and responsive to changing conditions.”
Since 2012, smart meter upgrade programs have been undertaken at all of NYPA’s power plants, transmission facilities, and large‑customer interfaces. Each installation consists of two meters at an interface point, which enables redundancy and automatic validation between the two meters. The meters are used for billing and wholesale market settlement with the NYISO, and the validation process improves the accuracy of measurements and avoids errors, ensuring that all energy generated and consumed is properly accounted for. The instrumentation also provides more granular energy measurement at various points across the power system, which prepares NYPA’s metering infrastructure to support future market changes to increasingly granular pricing and settlement structures.
With the completion of the first phase of smart meter installations at its facilities, NYPA will shortly begin installing such equipment at customer substations that connect the community-owned municipal and cooperative systems to the power grid, to better monitor the power system at the bulk wholesale level.
The upgrades also provide NYPA operators with better real‑time data visibility when issues arise and accelerate the troubleshooting process without the need to install additional equipment. The smart meter infrastructure allows system operators to profile trends in energy generation, transmission and usage, including voltage electricity flows and power quality.
For example, if a community-owned electric system customer is experiencing voltage problems, NYPA operators can leverage the meter data to view power quality measurements and trends to quickly resolve the issue.
NYPA is also investing in submetering at its non-power generating facilities, including its administrative office building in White Plains, to better monitor internal efficiency and energy usage. The submeters interface with the NY Energy Manager (NYEM) platform to provide visualization and target energy efficiency improvements. The submetering at NYPA facilities supports Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision strategy through the BuildSmartNYinitiative to improve energy efficiency in New York State‑owned buildings.
