A major push is on to move New York City’s electrical infrastructure to higher ground or upper floors after Superstorm Sandy sent seawater pouring into low-lying substations and skyscraper basements and plunged half of Manhattan into darkness for four days.
The effort, likely to be enormously costly, will center partly on two old weaknesses brought into sharp relief by the surge: power distribution stations built just yards from the water’s edge, and electrical components located in vulnerable basements.
Ever since Thomas Edison built the world’s first central power station in a Manhattan seaport district in 1882, central elements of the island’s electrical infrastructure have been located along the waterfront. Ten of Con Edison’s 101 transmission and distribution substations sit in flood zones.
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