Power Outages

[Tom Kelly]

Good morning all,

I hope this email finds you well. The last few days have been interesting to say the least. Thankfully, power has been restored to our house but to be running a gasoline generator for all hours is not a sustainable solution. 

I live on the last house on Increase Miller Rd that resides entirely in Lewisboro. My neighbor's house resides in the middle of both Lewisboro and Bedford on North Salem Rd. During the power outages, we were literally trapped as two trees fell on the left of their driveway and right of mine. The tree that fell on my side was the result of a dead tree which only partially fell. In order to prevent an outage like this again, that tree and another dead tree right next to it, should be taken down by NYSEG. 

I write to encourage dialogue with NYSEG and Chris Burdick on long-term solution for the community and use Increase Miller Rd and North Salem Rd as a test project. Governor Cuomo and state has heavily invested in creating a more sustainable and resilient grid. 

As the Senior Energy Manager at Purchase College, I am in the process of adding cogeneration, energy storage, a large scale solar canopy for our parking lot and investigating geothermal for a major renovation at one of the college's buildings. 

The test project that I alluded to would involve energy storage similar to what I am doing at the college. However, NYSEG would own and operate the energy storage project at times of outages. There is precedent for doing this as when I used to work for Pace's Energy Climate Center a decade ago, I co-wrote a paper on microgrids. One of the examples back then was San Diego Gas and Electric's use of distributed generation in Borrego Springs and more recently Com Ed is investigating energy storage 40 miles outside of Chicago. 

If approved for both towns and properly sited, NYSEG could reach out to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and NYSERDA and NYPA for financial assistance and providing some saving grace for a utility that rightfully so has come under increased scrutiny for its practices. Though I should say in fairness, the crews were phenomenal throughout the outage. 

In summary, for the short term, the two dead trees should be taken down and in the long term, energy storage should be investigated as a solution.  

Thanks, Tom

[Dan Welsh]

That's pretty heavy stuff, but really important. And what amazing projects you are working on at Purchase - fantastic!

Let's make this (that is, storage,microgrids, resilience) an agenda item at the next committee meeting.

- Dan

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