Green energy projects advance at Shinnecock Nation, Brentwood

By Mark Harringtonmark.harrington@newsday.com MHarringtonNewsOctober 26, 2021

Long Island’s green-energy sector got a few more shots in the arm this week as the Shinnecock Indian Nation received its first large-scale solar-power installation, and the New York Power Authority set the groundwork for the nation’s first test using green hydrogen to help fuel a power plant in Brentwood.

Both come as the state and the nation set aggressive targets for carbon-free energy over the next two decades, in an attempt to battle the worst effects of climate change.

On Monday, the Shinnecock Nation’s Wuneechanunk Shinnecock Preschool received a 14-kilowatt solar installation from the SUNation Cares nonprofit to provide nearly 100% of its power needs. SUNation Solar Systems, based in Ronkonkoma, provided the panels and equipment and labor at no charge. The system is valued at $50,000 and will save the school nearly $4,000 a year in electrical costs, officials said.

Denise Merchant, interim director of the school, said the solar system will provide not only needed savings that will help expand the school's cultural mission, but also will help it meet sustainability goals.

"This is just the next step in maintaining an independent, self-sustaining Shinnecock way of life," she said. It will be used to educate preschool children on green energy and allow the school to spend more resources on its cultural and native language programs, she said.

The Long Island Progressive Coalition connected SUNation with the Shinnecock Nation, and Ryan Madden, the coalition's sustainability organizer, said he hopes to bring similar projects to other structures on the tribe's land.

Bryan Polite, chairman of the Shinnecock tribal trustees, said the installation marks the first large-scale solar array on the Southampton reservation, where only a few homes have solar power. As the nation moves to renovate its community center and other buildings, he and housing director Phil Brown said more solar is sure to come, including in a newly developed transitional housing area where Brown said a microgrid with solar is in the plan.

"I can picture community solar here in a heartbeat," added Scott Maskin, chief executive of SUNation, referring to a program in which potentially hundreds of homeowners subscribe to cheaper power allotments from a central solar array. The company last month finished the largest community solar program on the roof of Karp Associates in Melville.

Meanwhile in Brentwood, the New York Power Authority cut the ribbon on what’s touted as the nation’s first test of a power plant using a renewable fuel known as green hydrogen in combination with natural gas.

Gil Quiniones, chief executive of NYPA who will depart his post in December to become CEO of ComEd in Illinois, said the demonstration program will begin blending gradually increasing amounts of the fuel — up to 30% — during November and December to test its viability in an existing, Quiniones said. NYPA is working with General Electric, Airgas, The Electric Power Research Institute, Sargent & Lundy and Fresh Meadow Power on the demonstration project.

"We need to look at all potential technologies that can help address and mitigate climate change," he said. "Once we find out the technologies that actually work, we need to scale them up and lower their cost so they can be exported across the globe."

Green hydrogen, which is made by sending electric current through water to split hydrogen atoms from oxygen, currently costs $2.50 to $4.50 a kilogram, up to up to four times the cost it needs to reach to be competitive with hydrogen that is made from a less-green process, Bloomberg News reported. That milestone could be reached by 2030.

But an activist group called Earthjustice expressed concern about the test in a letter to state officials, charging "the combustion of green hydrogen, including a hydrogen-gas blend, are associated with significant local air quality impacts due to increased nitrogen oxides emissions, and there are several environmental justice communities near the power plant."

Newsday first reported on the test in July.