Archive: News

Yesterday was the last day the Cayuga Power Plant was to generate electricity.  In a letter to the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) and New York Independent System Operator (ISO) a Cayuga Operating Company official notified the state authorities that Unit 1 would be mothballed on October 31.

The company is in the process of moving its business from a supplier of electricity to a data center.  At a public information meeting last June company officials explained they hope to repurpose the Lansing coal-fired power plant into what will eventually be a 100 megawatt data center at its north-west Lansing site.  COC had applied for an initial allotment of 25MW, and was allotted 2MW of that at the beginning of October.  The company hopes to use that as a stepping stone to acquire a large enough allotment to begin work on the data center.

At the June meeting officials explained that the data center will not use the old power plant building, which they hope to convert into space they can rent to other businesses. The data center itself will be in the form of Morton-style buildings to be constructed on the property.  The company also hopes to construct a solar farm that will provide between 15MW and 20MW of the power needed to operate the data center.

NYSO completed a generator deactivation assessment Monday that found "a generator deactivation reliability need following the deactivation of Unit 1 for the study period".  NYSO stated that COC could mothball Unit 1 on or after October 31, which cleared the way for the company to turn off the unit yesterday.

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