While many homes and businesses may not rise again, National Grid is rebuilding its infrastructure to withstand even stronger storms, something that could help usher in an era of growth for the region.
That includes a new $9.5 million substation that National Grid recently commissioned in the town of Florida, just outside the city of Amsterdam.
The substation will replace one that was destroyed when flooding from Irene and Lee swelled the Mohawk River, destroying gas and electric lines and even a transmission tower.
"Those few weeks I will never forget," said Bill Flaherty, the company's regional director. "The substation near Lock 10 had been flooded, several gas lines had been washed downstream and tens of thousands of customers were without power."
Although National Grid quickly installed temporary lines and brought in a mobile substation to serve the area, the company has been spending a substantial amount of time and money to install new permanent structures and for the latest, smartest technology that can better withstand future calamities. The technology will also provide the electric grid with more data and capabilities to prevent future outages.
The nearly $10 million for the new Amsterdam substation is part of $3 billion that National Grid previously allocated over a 10-year period ending in 2016 to upgrade its aging upstate electric system, which serves 1.6 million customers.
National Grid held a ceremony last month to commemorate the new substation and U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, who used to lead energy policy for New York state before being elected to Congress, was at the Oct. 20 event.
"The flooding that followed Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Lee and severe weather events of this summer had a significant impact on our Mohawk Valley communities," Tonko told the crowd. "I applaud National Grid for striving to build back stronger and smarter so that our critical infrastructure is resilient and efficient."
A natural disaster such as the one-two punch that was Irene and Lee demonstrate the threshold that utilities have to meet when hardening their systems against storms.
But in the case of the Amsterdam substation, National Grid gained an opportunity to replace a vital piece of equipment that was vulnerable to Mother Nature but wouldn't have normally been scheduled for retirement.
The major problem was that the original, decades-old substation was built close to the river, when the businesses it served were located there, says Keith McAfee, vice president for upstate New York electric operations.
"Now that's not the case," McAfee said. "But it certainly was serviceable until we had the floods."
When National Grid replaced the substation, it improved the technology and moved it to a better site, a few miles west of the old one, on higher ground.
"It's all new technology," McAfee said.
That includes switch gear relay systems that use the latest microprocessor technology to provide detailed information to the utility when circuits go offline in the wake of storms or outages. The old relays used electromechanical technology that couldn't provide much information on the cause of the outage to the utility's control center in Guilderland, which covers the eastern part of its upstate territory. National Grid has been replacing the older systems with the new ones all across the upstate system.
"That allows us to get data on the system in real time," McAfee said. "The solid-state (semiconductor microprocessor) relays provide better data acquisition of situations on our system."
The Amsterdam substation was also rebuilt so that it can easily expand. The older one was built for a lower electrical load. Now the new substation has direct feeds to the new Beech-Nut Nutrition plant and the Target distribution center, two large industrial businesses that weren't there when the original substation was built.
National Grid is expecting more growth in the Amsterdam area, which is highly desirable because of access to the Thruway and Route 5S, which stretches from Rotterdam to Utica. It is also relatively close to the growth in the high-tech industry in Saratoga County and Albany.
"That's all load that wasn't there before," Flaherty, the regional executive said. "We're always looking at areas where we are seeing growth. That 5S corridor is ripe for growth. It's a great transportation corridor."
lrulison@timesunion.com, 518-454-5504, @larryrulison
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