Natural gas is the main fuel on Long Island. LIPA *can* burn fuel oil, but it doesn’t. It’s generators were changed over to allow burning natural gas TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago. And if you’ve read any LIPS document printed since, they all presume natural-gas operation.
True.
LIPA *can* burn fuel oil, but it doesn’t.
False. LIPA can and does, although every year they use it less and less.
It’s generators were changed over to allow burning natural gas TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago.
Coal burning generators were converted to natural gas and fuel oil.
And if you’ve read any LIPS document printed since, they all presume natural-gas operation.
Of course LIPA doesn't like to talk about fuel oil usage and yes they have been trying to phase out fuel oil usage, but it's still used to supplement natural gas, especially in the winter.
And there are documents.
Survey of National Grid Generation Formerly Owned By LILCO (June 2015)
(excerpts)
Early last week, both Sarah and Assemblyman Brown met with Joseph Warren, director of the Northport Power Station, at the location of an oil tank immediately adjacent to Northport Soccer Park. The smell as they approached the tank, Sarah said, was “like hitting a wall.” Mr. Warren told them the odor residents have been reporting “is an oil odor coming off the oil storage tank next to the fields,” said Sarah. “Apparently if the tank heats up, or if the oil is moved, these odors are released.” Sarah was told operations involving that tank would be halted on the weekends of the soccer season.
Halting operations on the weekend may provide a temporary respite from the smell, but what about people who live there and are exposed to the odor on a daily basis, Sarah asked.
"Natural gas is supplied by a natural gas pipeline routed under the Long Island Sound and fuel oil is delivered to the steam units via ship through an offshore unloading terminal in the Long Island Sound, approximately two miles from the site. Mr. Warren testified in early 2019 that the plant’s units used natural gas about 95 percent of the time. In recent months, however, when natural gas prices rose significantly, residents reported noticing an increase in oil deliveries to the site."
On Monday, November 15, National Grid media representatives confirmed with the Journal that the company “identified a potential source of the odor as being fuel oil vapors from one of the storage tanks.” To address the odor, they said, workers on November 9 – the same day Sarah and Assemblyman Brown visited the tank – began transferring additional fuel oil into the tank to reduce both the vapor space at the top of the tank and the fuel oil’s temperature. “We apologize for the inconvenience the odor has caused the community,”
The above excerpts describe fuel oil operations still going on (to supplement natural gas) even as late as November, 2021.