Northern Power & Light Brings Renewable Power and Light to Local Businesses

NP&L was founded in 2018 by brothers Emmett and Ethan Smith, and Louise Gava.

“Because of increased interest in renewable (electricity), there’s new ways for consumers to buy energy,” Emmett Smith said. “NP&L was founded to take advantage of those opportunities.”

There’s been a dam at the site since the 1890s, when it was part of the Raquette River Paper Company. The original 19th century mill harnessed the power of the river to run a log-grinding machine that turned the timber into paper pulp. The current hydrodam was built in 1989, Boralex’s website says.

Here’s how the dam works. The process of generating electricity from running water is essentially the same as the Moses-Saunders Power Project in Massena, except the Sissonville dam has one turbine instead of 32. The water from the Raquette enters the dam from below the floor level and spins the turbine. The powerhouse and turbine are built down 18 feet, below the riverbed. The turbine spins a generator, which makes the actual electricity, and from there the electrons generated are fed into the power grid. The excess water is fed out the back of the dam.

“Hydro can be very disruptive or very benign,” Mr. Smith said. With a larger 32-turbine project like Moses-Saunders, that’s why the current is so strong for miles downstream, which caused long-term environmental disruption.

The generator is a series of metal coils arranged in a circle and spun on a rotor, while inside of that a series of electromagnets are attached to what’s called a stator, which doesn’t move. That arrangement of magnets and copper wiring uses basic physics – a magnet passing near metal creates electricity, which Mr. Smith calls “your basic sixth-grade science project.”

To make this generate alternating current, the magnets on the stators are arranged with the poles alternating every other time, so they’re arranged north pole, south pole, north pole, south pole, around the entire apparatus, so the current changes 60 times per second. The generator has to spin faster than the turbine, and that’s regulated by a mechanism called a gearbox.

The Sissonville dam, Mr. Smith said, is designed to cause minimal disruption to the local environment.

“We have a primary infrastructure responsibility over and above making electricity” he said, adding that part of their job is to maintain the water levels and reduce flood risk, which they’re able to do by controlling the volume of water feeding through the dam. Mr. Smith said environmental regulations mean they can’t alter the water level and they have to regulate flow in a manner that preserves the local ecosystem.

When the water level is high, more water goes through the dam, generating more electricity. They also have discharge pipes on the low side that can be used to let more water out of the high side. When the water level is low, a lower volume of water passes through the dam, which decreases their electrical output. That is automatically regulated by the dam’s computerized flood-control system; however, it can be manually overridden.

The automatic controls oversee every aspect of making sure the dam runs properly. Cody L. Bice, who works part-time as a Sissonville dam operator, said it’s constantly monitoring temperature of the turbine bearings, which if they get too hot can cause a total system failure. Automatic controls also monitor lubricating oil, monitor for the water height on the high and low sides of the dam.

“The kilowattage changes based on river flow. The gates are set for maximum production, and the gates auto-regulate based on (water) flow,” Mr. Bice said. “Automatic works better (than manual controls). It’s more efficient.”

Mr. Bice said there’s a lot of maintenance and monitoring that goes into making sure the dam runs as it should around the clock. Part of the maintenance is cleaning debris off of gates that keep it from getting down inside the guts of the dam. In the winter, they install metal filtering racks with four-inch gaps. For the warmer months, starting around usually in mid- or late-March, they remove those and install gates with one-inch gaps. That’s to stop fish and debris from being pulled through the dam.

“Sometimes you get some volleyballs and some weird stuff coming through,” Mr. Bice said. “This time of year, you get a lot of patio furniture coming through.”

Mr. Smith said the Raquette River is ideal for producing hydroelectric power.

“It’s really long and has a lot of lakes, so it has an even flow,” he said.

He compared that to other rivers in the eastern Adirondacks, which he described as “like flushing a toilet: there’s a high variable flow.”

“The Raquette is more consistent,” he said, which is easier to regulate and therefore can produce more power. “North of the Mohawk, the Raquette is the best hydro river around.”

NP&L also owns and operates a hydrodam in St. Regis Falls, built on the St. Regis River in 1993. It’s similar to the Sissonville dam, except it contains two vertically oriented turbines, instead of one horiztonally aligned. The St. Regis Falls turbines respectively generate 300 kilowatts and 500 kilowatts, which is less than the Sissonville dam generates. That’s because the NP&L-owned dam is on a body of water with less flow.

This site on the St Regis River was first dammed in the 1880s by the Brooklyn Cooperage company, which made sugar barrels from local timber.

Mr. Smith said he sees NP&L “as sort of a Main Street tech company.”

“We’re not trying to ... rule the world. We’re looking to protect the local industry and deal with local customers,” he said. “We’re disrupting downwards. We’re taking a product that’s been dominated by large global utilities and large players and turning it into sustainable local pieces. We’re taking the power back.”

Anyone can sign up to get their power directly from NP&L. They would still pay National Grid for actually delivering the electricity. The electricity itself would be removed from the National Grid bill, and NP&L would send their own bill for the difference. They offer a 25% low-income discount.

“We think of it as a premium product for the same price. Usually renewable energy costs you more,” Mr. Smith said. “[NP&L customers] switch from wholesale to retail to get a better price for the power.”

“People feel very powerless with their National Grid bill. They don’t understand it. They have to pay it,” Mr. Smith said. We know what the grid bill means. We can tell people when they’re paying too much.”

As of late March, NP&L had about 1,300 customers, ranging from single homes to larger customers like dairy farms and Paul Smith’s College.

“It’s just been going up,” Mr. Smith said.