In isolation, NYISO volunteers work to keep power running for nearly 20 million New Yorkers
With New York reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, and energy reliability needed to keep the lights on for those quarantined at home, a group of grid control room operators at the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) have opted to forego friends and families to keep power flowing.
Working in 12-hour shifts, a 37-person team of volunteers entered a sequestration program as part of NYISO’s pandemic response plan. It is the first time such a drastic step has been required in more than 20 years of operation, but COVID-19 has made it necessary. These volunteers will only get to see one another for as long as the pandemic drags on, working out of NYISO’s main office in Albany, New York, and a backup site 15 miles away. Even in their off-hours, they will be kept to separate trailers, isolated from the world.
Of this team, seven will be on duty at any one time, monitoring displays and directing power generators and distributors to maintain the energy transmission balance. On the line: nearly 20 million residents and businesses.
“This is unparalleled in our history,” Rich Dewey, president and CEO of NYISO, said in a March 31 blog post. “We had a pandemic plan that we hoped we would never have to use. Then we started to see the proliferation of the number of COVID-19 cases in the local area, and we felt it was a prudent step.”
Even the shifts themselves have no contact during a changeover: the day shift works from a different facility than the night shift. Though each operator was tested for COVID-19 before going into the compounds, their temperature is still checked twice a day to guarantee the disease is not spreading within. Their work stations are sterilized after each shift and meals are individually wrapped.
“It’s a pretty important job to get done,” said Tim Pasquini, a generation operator with NYISO. “This whole quarantine and ‘shelter-in-place’ … it would be a lot less successful if people didn’t have electricity.”
The working compound hosts around a quarter-mile perimeter on which the staff is allowed to exercise and all trailers come with their own TVs and wifi hotspots, so they can stay in touch. Phone, texts and video communication are their lifelines, and will be for the foreseeable future — no one at NYISO, or even among the federal government, can yet say for certain when COVID-19’s moment will pass.
