Quick update: all but one NYPA peaker in NYC runs more since Indian Point closed

Oops, when this post first went out, the Joseph J Seymour plant in the chart was mislabeled as Staten Island. It should be labeled as Brooklyn.

In my last post I wrote about how New York City environmental groups expressed anger in 2023 that one of the NYPA peakers in the Bronx ran more frequently in the (then) two years since the Indian Point nuclear power plant closed. But they only obliquely pinned it on the closure—in the title of a chart not in any text.

Their public comment, and that chart, only concerned the Harlem River Yards peaker. What about the rest of the NYC peaker plants owned by NYPA? Turns out all but one of them have indeed run more often since the Indian Point closure, as the following chart shows:

Over the last decade, the two in the Bronx have increased their monthly output since the closure by almost three times, while the one in Queens is next at two-and-half times. Only the Joseph J. Seymour peaker in Brooklyn has slightly reduced its output, though that might be an artifact of recent data for it being unavailable.

As a caveat, one can’t easily argue causation here; there could be myriad factors involved in explaining why the peakers are being relied on more often since Indian Point’s second unit shut down in 2021.