At the New York Power Authority, “innovation is part of our ecosystem,” Justin Driscoll, President and CEO of NYPA, said on Oct. 6.
“It’s embedded into the operations, processes and decision making at each facility, project and program,” said Driscoll in remarks made in Washington, D.C., at the Public Utilities Fortnightly’s annual Fortnightly Top Innovators 2025 event.
An example of NYPA innovation is its Integrated Smart Operations Center, he noted. NYPA has deployed across the state more than 150,000 sensors “that are all fed into our office in White Plains and we use this tool as an asset” monitoring NYPA’s digital twin function.
“We’ve created a digital twin that shows what proper operations of all of our fleet look like – both transmission and generation – and then we compare that to real time sensor data,” he said. “We have actually spotted incidences where we’ve avoided having to take a forced outage and we’ve actually started to track how much money we’ve been saving through those sensor deployments and spotting through that digital twin effort” if there are irregularities in the operation of NYPA’s system.
Another example of NYPA innovation is its Advanced Grid Innovation Laboratory for Energy, or AGILe. At the lab, NYPA personnel utilize another digital twin technology to create a replica of the power system.
“We’ve modeled the entire grid all the way down to the distribution level and that means we can simulate extreme weather events, test renewable integration strategies – plug in a wind farm or solar farm in different parts of the state,” he said.
“We can optimize operations in a safe, controlled environment, all before making changes in the real world,” Driscoll said.
“For example, we can study the effects of adding a wind farm off the coast of Long Island or it could help us” in deciding where NYPA may site a nuclear power plant or plants, “depending upon whether we go with an SMR technology or an AP1000.”
In addition, “we can and have also simulated cyberattacks on the New York grid and we can test the latest cyber intrusion technologies to assess their effectiveness on our system.”
Outside the lab, “innovation is driving our approach to safety on the ground, from Niagara Falls to New York City. At our assets across the state we deploy drones and robotics for inspections – and by that we’re not just saving costs, we’re keeping workers safe, risking the machine and not the worker while gathering richer data to manage our assets.”
With respect to advanced nuclear power, he noted that NYPA is exploring next generation reactors “designed for enhanced safety and efficiency with smaller footprints, faster construction times and lower waste.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in June directed NYPA to develop and construct an advanced nuclear power plant in Upstate New York.
Along with Driscoll’s speech and panels focused on innovation, the event recognized individual innovators at electric, natural gas, and water utilities.
