Research & Development to Enhance the Clean Energy Transition
Research & Development to Enhance the Clean Energy Transition
Overview
Con Edison’s Research & Development department fosters a safe work environment, improves operational excellence, and provides an excellent customer experience from a different perspective than our operating groups. Our R&D teams are at the forefront of innovation and have been awarded numerous patents and awards that help us achieve our clean energy goals and provide reliable service to our customers.
An innovative spirit is one of our company’s greatest assets. Our research and development (R&D) teams work diligently to find solutions that make the workplace safer, improve our operations and enhance our customers’ quality of life. Many of our ongoing projects are described below.
Download ReportOperational Excellence
- Completed modifications to the Explorer 20/26 in-line inspection system that enables internal gas pipeline inspections in areas of significant liquid accumulation. The modifications will allow for more reliable results when conducting corrosion and damage inspections of live natural gas mains, and quicker remediation.
- Performed a successful demonstration of a No-Blow Flow Test Device for the gas system. The device pushes the gas through a bypass and performs the flow test without venting gas to the atmosphere, the current practice during a flow test. Flow tests are required for certain low-pressure gas main cut-outs and are performed to allow removal of a section of the gas main without customer interruption.
- Launched a year-long evaluation of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) traffic cones in an effort to improve the environmental sustainability of our work area protection set up. HDPE cones can be recycled and are made of a stiffer material that better withstands hot weather.
Customer Excellence
- Completed installation of a shipping container farm on Governor’s Island in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Governor’s Island Trust, and the New York City based non-profit GrowNYC. This multi-phase project aims to: evaluate indoor food production using off-grid renewable energy, serve as an educational center for urban agriculture, and supply kale to local farmer’s markets.
- Advanced the Electro-Hydraulic Fracturing (EHF) technology towards final design through additional field testing. EHF by using plasma energy to break rocks exposed during construction activities, offers a quieter and faster operation relative to using jackhammers.
- Chaired and hosted the New York Joint Utilities’ Advanced Technology Working Group technical conference, which is tasked with coordinating research into advanced technologies and non-wire alternatives in support of the State’s CLCPA goals.
Governors Island Container Farm.Partnering with the Trust for Governors Island and GrowNYC to advance the future of urban farming.
Clean Energy
- Deployed an extended demonstration of a completely off-grid office for both the cooling and heating seasons. The “Net Zero Tri Generation” mobile office space provides its own electricity, heating and cooling needs through specialized solar photovoltaic thermal panels integrated with a waste heat recovery system and a cooling system that uses an adsorption process of heating and cooling to replace the functions of a traditional compressor.
- Kicked off a three-year clean energy and climate initiative effort with Brookhaven National Laboratory designed to build a framework for evaluating and informing energy infrastructure resiliency under various climate change scenarios and associated extreme weather events. The effort will evaluate the coupling of energy focused climate/weather models with grid modeling and data drive outage forecasting.
- Co-hosted the Waste Heat Energy Recovery Technologies Webinar with the Urban Green Council. The event featured presentations by five energy recovery technology providers, who highlighted various methods of providing non-fossil decarbonization solutions that not only provide higher energy savings to conventional heating systems but can also provide earning opportunities through the Company’s Earnings Adjustment Mechanism (EAM).
- Launched a new EPRI study to assess the economic viability of switching from retail to wholesale tariffs for Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Customers. The project includes development of new tariff offerings to enable DERs to participate in the wholesale market voluntarily.