Soaring Demand for Electricity in East Hampton Saps Supplies

Demand for electricity on the South Fork has far outpaced the rest of Long Island, with particularly high usage in the summer and on weekends and holidays — and residential air conditioning is the primary culprit. 

Demand has vastly outpaced population growth. Over the last decade, the number of residential accounts has grown by 4 percent, while peak use has risen 44 percent, according to PSEG Long Island, which manages the island’s electrical grid on behalf of the Long Island Power Authority. Commercial accounts have grown by 12.3 percent over the same period. 

“We continue to build very energy-inefficient homes — big homes — in the Town of East Hampton, and we all keep plugging more stuff in,” said Gordian Raacke, executive director of the advocacy group Renewable Energy Long Island and a member of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee. “We didn’t used to have tablets, three computers at home, and big-screen televisions.”  

The peak load of 286 megawatts in 2015 is expected to grow to 314 megawatts in 2019 and increase, at an average rate of 2.6 percent, to 341 megawatts by 2022. In the area east of Buell Lane in East Hampton Village, the peak load is projected to be 41 megawatts in 2019 and 54 megawatts by 2030. 

Around 22,000 residential customers on the South Fork have central air conditioning, according to PSEG, and some 18,300 have swimming pool pumps. They are largely responsible for residential customers’ average annual energy use of approximately 11,500 kilowatt hours, compared to an Islandwide average of 9,700. 

“This is the summer population driving that up,” Mr. Raacke said of the steadily increasing demand. “That’s when you’re talking about mansions that run air-conditioners full time, full blast,” and property owners that “often don’t care about how much it’s going to cost in the electric bill.” 

In looking to increase the generation of electricity for the South Fork, PSEG Long Island issued a request for proposals in June seeking an additional 63 megawatts of electricity to be installed between 2017 and 2019. Without additional, locally produced power, new transmission lines would have to be installed. It is apparent from the request for proposals that PSEG wishes to avoid new lines given the uproar in East Hampton to recently installed transmission lines.

Twenty-one proposals were received from 16 companies by the due date of Dec. 2, offering a mix of conventional and renewable electricity sources. 

In addition, Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, has proposed providing the South Fork with electricity generated by 15 offshore wind turbines to be constructed 30 miles from Montauk. The company, which is building a wind farm that will provide power to Block Island, also proposes to build battery energy storage facilities in Montauk and Wainscott. If approved, the project would contribute 33 megawatts to the South Fork upon completion, which could occur by 2022. 

In each of the last 10 years, the South Fork’s annual peak demand occurred during the afternoon in either July or August, most often on a Saturday as a result of the significant summer-weekend population. The transmission and distribution system as a whole does not peak on weekends, however, because the commercial load is far greater on weekdays. On a peak summer day, up to 60 percent of the South Fork’s average residential load is directly attributable to air-conditioning, according to PSEG, which is to choose from among the proposals in May and to begin executing contracts in the fourth quarter of the year.

In its request for proposals PSEG did not stipulate specific technologies, but a summary of responses included battery storage (banks of batteries that are charged during periods of lower demand and discharged into the electrical grid during peak conditions), combustion turbines powered by biofuels, and “distributed resources,” smaller installations spread throughout an area that could incorporate both batteries and cooperative systems through which PSEG would temporarily deactivate high-consuming equipment, by agreement with the customer, to reduce load. 

The latter scheme is based on PSEG Long Island’s Utility 2.0 Long Range Plan, adopted last year, which is guided by the idea that smaller resources spread through a service area may be superior to traditional power plants and transmission lines. Other technologies proposed include conventional fossil fuel-based electricity generation and solar power. 

Jeffrey Weir, PSEG Long Island’s director of communications, would not comment on the specific proposals received but referred to the LIPA board of trustees’ 2012 authorization to diversify its resource portfolio. “PSEG is well on our way to fulfilling the trustees’ commitment of renewables to our energy portfolio,” he said on Tuesday. The company, he said, “wants the best thing for Long Island, not just in price but what’s best for public policy.” 

Mr. Raacke hoped that PSEG would meet the South Fork’s growing demand by “doing the right thing and selecting clean energy, and not more polluting, dirty, inappropriate fossil-fuel technology.” He pointed to the trend toward solar installations that gained momentum on Long Island, if not on the South Fork, this year.

“Islandwide, 2015 has seen huge growth over prior years,” he said, with an estimated 25,000 installations by year’s end. He also pointed to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s directive to the Public Service Commission, issued last month, to adopt a requirement that the state generate 50 percent of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2030. 

Deepwater Wind’s proposal, coming one year after LIPA’s board of trustees rejected a proposed offshore wind farm in favor of 11 solar installations, is particularly intriguing, Mr. Raacke said. “They have scaled it down to match the peak demand, and they’ve coupled it with storage to guarantee to meet peak demand,” he said. “The wind has very good peak matching, but there could be a hot summer afternoon when the wind is not blowing strongly enough. That’s why they have the batteries, to basically guarantee power at all times during those few peak demand events during the summer.” 

That, he said, would mark “the first time a renewable energy developer competes head to head with a conventional fossil technology. That’s changing the game, and is an interesting thing to watch. It could be very attractive to LIPA and PSEG, but we won’t know until May.”