The Oil Drum

Originally reported by Con Edison as a small isolated power outage affected at most 2,000 people, it was determined yesterday that the outage really affected something like 100,000 in Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside and Hunter's Point sections of Queens. The power outage was caused by a mixture of aging infrastructure, high temperatures, high electrical demand and thunderstorms that flooded certain areas since last Sunday. And there is currently no end in sight, despite original promises of 1-2 days.

Here's today's coverage: NY Post, NY Times and more NY Times, NY Newsday and NY Daily News.

It probably will become clear over the next few days, but currently I'm proud that once again New York has shown that it can handle disruptions like this without going crazy. See an old classic PO-NYC post comparing the peaceful 2003 city-wide blackout to the more violent and distructive 1977 blackout and my review of James Goodman's book "Blackout"

This Sunday, the NY Times City section did an editorial on the Mayor's energy task force.

For a city that gobbles energy like contestants at the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, it was surprising to learn recently, from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's energy task force, that New York won't be needing new power plants until at least 2012. That's a very different report than one issued just two years ago, which said the city would be needing 25 percent more energy generation by 2008. The turnaround is a result, in part, of the city's aggressive conservation and efficiency goals under Mr. Bloomberg. But the city is hardly out of the woods on energy.

Indeed, while NYC is very energy efficient compared to it's suburban and exurban counterparts, the sheer number of people does require an enormous amount of power.

Last month I did a big energy conservation sweep of the apartment. I unplugged a bunch of small appliances that are a contant draw on the electricity. I converted all my lighting from old incadescent bulbs to compact florescent bulbs and turned everything off before leaving the apartment. I mostly read and listened to the radio for entertainment. Used a fan instead of the air conditioner. I even dimmed my computer monitor a bit. You get the picture...

Yesterday I got the results of my experiment. I was able to trim my electric usage from over 8 KWH a day to just 4.7 KWH per day. Some of that was just the natural transition of a hot August to a more mild September, but I think I can do even better for October.

At the price that I pay as part of the Con Edison Energy Solutions, Green Power Initiative, 5.64 cents per kilowatt hour, I paid just $8.46 for my actual electric usage. I'm not sure what the average is, but I think this is pretty low overall.

That's the good news. For the bad news, go below the fold

 

Last month I did a big energy conservation sweep of the apartment. I unplugged a bunch of small appliances that are a contant draw on the electricity. I converted all my lighting from old incadescent bulbs to compact florescent bulbs and turned everything off before leaving the apartment. I mostly read and listened to the radio for entertainment. Used a fan instead of the air conditioner. I even dimmed my computer monitor a bit. You get the picture...

Yesterday I got the results of my experiment. I was able to trim my electric usage from over 8 KWH a day to just 4.7 KWH per day. Some of that was just the natural transition of a hot August to a more mild September, but I think I can do even better for October.

At the price that I pay as part of the Con Edison Energy Solutions, Green Power Initiative, 5.64 cents per kilowatt hour, I paid just $8.46 for my actual electric usage. I'm not sure what the average is, but I think this is pretty low overall.

That's the good news. For the bad news, go below the fold