Has it really been two years since I first posted on this issue? Yes indeed, New York Regional Interconnect erupted as an issue in May 2006 and the fun still hasn’t stopped. So who’s up, who’s down now?

NYRI has been handed a setback with a rejection of their application for federal incentives. A recent Post-Standard editorial on NYRI de-emphasizes how costs for the project could be passed on to local consumers and taxpayers both. Stop the Power Lines explains the different ways that could happen.

FERC’s guaranteed 13.5% repay clause affects ALL U.S. TAXPAYERS. It makes people far and wide pay for transmission projects aimed to benefit urban centers… Granting NYRI incentive-based rate treatment at a rate of return of 13.5 % is premature and fails to promote a selection of cheaper, alternative routes, if any is needed at all. NYRI’s request presumes the need for any new power line in this area and ignores the ongoing litigation before the New York State Public Service Commission, the agency that will ultimately decide that issue. At first NYRI pledged to foot the entire bill for this project “at no risk to New Yorkers,” but now it claims it needs federal incentives to pay for the project.

The Feds agreed, at least temporarily. Score one for the anti-NYRI forces.

I’m not happy with some of the PS’ reporting on power issues lately. This story about a new nuke plant in Oswego includes NYRI’s questionable assertion that the 2003 blackout would somehow not have happened with their powerline in place; but doesn’t note the opposition’s position, which is that NYRI’s screaming of “2003! 2003!” is simplistic bull. According to expert testimony to the New York legislature after that blackout, it’s a lot more complicated than that, and has to do with grid structure and growth pattern, not with how many transmission wires we have available. (More on the meaning(s) of “congestion” here, via PULP, Public Utility Law Project of New York.)

Meanwhile, NYRI wants to offer jobs to disabled veterans. Rather difficult to say anything against that concept, so I won’t.

Gov. Paterson ordered creation of a state energy plan early last month. It’s about time. (Why is Paterson now making all the noises we wished Spitzer would make?) March 31, 2009 is the deadline for the first draft of the plan.