The Unequal Price of Peaker Power
News Doc
By: Eliza Mitnick
Suga Ray remembers first noticing the red and white striped smokestacks as a kid riding his bike and playing basketball with friends. The tallest smokestack on the Ravenswood Generating Station, called “Big Allis”, looms nearly one mile high. He shakes his head and looks up at it now. “Health is the biggest issue in Queensbridge,” he says. It’s the cost of living in such proximity to this highly toxic type of power plant.
Nineteen of the 24 power plants around New York City only turn on a few weeks each year, during the times of peak energy use. They are called peakers, for short, and they use natural gas turbines to produce electricity. Ravenswood is the state’s largest peaker power plant, and it can produce twenty percent of the city’s peak electrical needs. When its peakers turn on, mainly during heat waves and cold spells, it spews out the greenhouse gasses nitrogen and sulfur oxide as well as particulates, which are tiny bits of liquid and solid droplets. Breathing in these pollutants, especially the particulates, greatly increases the risk of respiratory disease in adults and children.
