Long Island Electrical Power: From Freeport to Montauk Wind

If you think paying your PSEG Long Island bill is painful now, wait until you hear the wild power history of how Long Island first lit up the night. The tangled saga of Freeport Electric, the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), and finally PSEG Long Island is full of bright ideas, political drama, billion-dollar mistakes, and a nuclear plant that never really worked. Add in the giant smokestacks that once defined Long Island’s skyline, and you’ve got a story that’s part engineering, part politics, and part neighborhood legend.

Let’s flip the switch on some crazy facts.

Freeport Electric: Long Island’s First Shocking Experiment

Before LILCO, one of Long Island’s earliest power players was Freeport Electric, born in 1879 by public referendum. By April 1898, the utility was running 24 carbon lights.

The rates were almost comical by today’s standards:

Banks, stores, stables: ¾ cent per light
Hotels and saloons: ½ cent per light
Residential (10 lights and under): $3 per month

Freeport Electric has survived for more than 118 years and today powers 15,000 customers in a village of about 45,000 residents, broken down as:

13,000 residential
1,800 commercial/industrial
200 municipal and water

Some other fun facts about Freeport Electric:

Runs two generating stations with a total installed capacity of 75,000 KW.
Peak system demand: 60 MW.
Their old 30 MW substation was replaced in 1996 with an 84 MW interconnection substation on Sunrise Highway. Price tag? $10.5 million.
About 80% of Freeport’s power today comes from New York Power Authority hydroelectricity.
Energy costs are 30% cheaper than PSEG Long Island (LIPA) rates.

Recognition: In 2016, Freeport Electric was honored with a Platinum Designation by the American Public Power Association for excellence in reliability, safety, workforce development, and system improvement. And yes, when storms hit, Freeport Electric has even sent crews to help LIPA.

Enter LILCO: The Giant That Couldn’t Get It Right

The Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) was founded in 1910, when four small Suffolk utilities merged: Amityville, Islip, Northport, and Sayville. By 1911, it was officially running with just 34 employees and $70,000 in revenue.

From there, LILCO grew like crazy:

1915–1919: Bought Babylon Electric, Suffolk Gas & Electric, South Shore Gas, Huntington Light & Power, Huntington Gas, and North Shore Electric Light.
1919: A Bay Shore gas plant explosion left customers without service for three days.
By the 1920s: Expanded across Nassau, Suffolk, and the Rockaways, eventually serving 2.8 million people.
1938: The “Long Island Express” hurricane caused $500,000 in damages to equipment.
1944: Another hurricane wiped out 91% of the system.

But growth had its problems. LILCO was constantly fighting lawsuits, state investigations, and angry customers over its rates.

Some highlights (or lowlights):

1957: Bought land in Northport for what became the largest power station in the country.
1960s–70s: Electric demand skyrocketed, fueled by air conditioning. LILCO announced plans for nuclear power.
Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant (1965–1980s): Originally budgeted at $75 million, costs ballooned to $4.6 billion. The plant never operated beyond 5% testing because officials decided Suffolk County could never be safely evacuated in case of a meltdown.
1980s: LILCO went into financial freefall. Bond ratings dropped, customers protested, and even hurricanes seemed to expose its incompetence.

LIPA: The Public Authority With Private Problems

The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) was created in 1986 by Governor Mario Cuomo to deal with the Shoreham disaster. It eventually took over LILCO’s transmission and distribution system in 1998 for $1 and promptly shut down Shoreham.

Key moments:

1990s–2000s: LIPA owned the grid, but private companies ran it. KeySpan took over, then was acquired by National Grid in 2007.
2012 Superstorm Sandy: More than 90% of Long Island lost power. Public outrage grew after LIPA and National Grid fumbled restoration.
2014: Governor Andrew Cuomo brought in New Jersey-based PSEG Long Island to run operations.

PSEG Long Island: Same Story, New Name

PSEG Long Island took over in 2014, rebranding the system and taking near-total control of operations.

But… things didn’t exactly improve.

2020 Tropical Storm Isaias: 646,000 customers (58%) lost power. PSEG’s new outage management system collapsed and they didn’t know where the power was out. Customers couldn’t even report outages.
A LIPA task force later called it pure “mismanagement.”
By 2021, public campaigns like Reimagine LIPA pushed for a fully public model.

Recent updates:

2023–2024: Offshore wind farms like South Fork Wind went online, powering 70,000 homes.
LIPA won national awards for reliability and community service.
Yet, in 2025, despite internal recommendations to switch operators, the LIPA Board voted to renew PSEG Long Island’s contract through 2025—ignoring staff advice that another company had a “materially better” deal.

The Stacks That Powered Long Island: From Barrett to Northport

For over a century, Long Island’s skyline wasn’t glass towers — it was smokestacks. From Glenwood Landing’s ornate “Power Palace” to Northport’s four towering chimneys visible from Connecticut, these power stations didn’t just light our homes — they shaped our communities, fueled lawsuits, and left generations of school kids wondering if their district would lose half its budget if LIPA won another tax fight.

Here’s the shocking history of Long Island’s four landmark fossil-fueled power stations:

Port Jefferson Power Station

Built by LILCO starting in 1948, with Units 1–4 completed by 1960.
Originally coal-fired, later converted to oil and then natural gas.
434 ft smokestacks dominate the harbor view — ferry riders know them well.
Two older units were retired in 1994; the remaining units run mostly on gas, but their start-up times are so long they’re practically used as peakers today.
In the early 2000s, LIPA squeezed in two “mini-turbines” under an 80 MW threshold to dodge a full environmental review. The Village of Poquott sued, lost, and the turbines went online in 2002.
In 2014, National Grid pitched replacing the plant with a modern combined-cycle station. By 2017, a study concluded it wasn’t worth it: demand had plateaued.
Port Jeff also became a battlefield over taxes, with lawsuits from the school district and village. In 2018, a settlement cut LIPA’s tax payments over nine years.

Crazy fact: The plant’s cooling system pulls directly from Port Jefferson Harbor, sparking complaints it kills fish larvae and marine life.

Glenwood Generating Station

First built in 1906, expanded in 1928–31 with a Beaux-Arts style brick station so ornate it was nicknamed the “Power Palace.”
Its massive arched windows, Flemish brick, and limestone detailing made it look more like a museum than a utility building.
Managed LILCO’s entire system in the 1930s — the “nerve center” of Long Island electricity.
Fun WWII story: A 1942 outage shut down Grumman and Republic Aviation assembly lines. Workers played baseball in the factory until the lights came back. The Army even considered guarding the plant.
In the 2000s, residents fought to save the beautiful but crumbling Station 2 building. Renovation was estimated at $100 million. Instead, demolition came in 2013–15.
Before demolition, crews had to relocate a peregrine falcon nest from one of the stacks.
Today, only smaller gas turbines remain, plus the Y-50 Cable that links Long Island’s grid to Westchester under the Sound.

Crazy fact: In the 1970s, Oyster Bay refused LILCO’s request to add five turbines, arguing locals were already turning down their thermostats and “wearing sweaters” to save fuel during the energy crisis.

E.F. Barrett Power Station (Island Park)

Built in 1956 and 1963 on Barnum Island, named after LILCO president Edward F. Barrett.
Once coal-fired, converted to oil and gas.
350 ft smokestacks are a South Shore landmark, visible to every boater on Reynolds Channel.
Today: 2 steam units (188 MW each), 8 gas turbines, and 4 jet engine units for a total of 669 MW.
It’s also the interconnection point for Empire Wind, meaning offshore turbines will soon be plugging into Long Island right here.
Like Port Jeff and Northport, Barrett became the center of tax fights. In 2019, Nassau cut LIPA’s payments in half, leaving Island Park and Oceanside schools scrambling. Lawsuits followed.

Crazy fact: The Transcontinental Pipeline terminates right at Barrett, making it one of the most critical gas supply nodes on Long Island.

Northport Power Station (“The Stacks”)

The biggest of them all — 4 steam turbines, 387 MW each, plus one small gas turbine for a total of 1,564 MW.
Built 1967–1977 on a former sand mine site. When finished, it was one of the last oil-fired plants in the U.S.
The four 620 ft stacks are the tallest freestanding structures on Long Island and visible from 36 miles away in Connecticut.
Connected to New England via the Northport–Norwalk Harbor Cable, first built in 1969 and replaced in 2008.
In 2005, environmental groups named it the #1 polluter on Long Island, spewing 5.2 million metric tons of CO₂ a year.
Production has fallen drastically: from 55% of capacity in 2005 to just 15% in 2019, projected to drop to under 3% by 2035.
At one point it was the most taxed building in the U.S., with an $80 million bill. After years of lawsuits and protests, LIPA settled in 2020, cutting payments nearly in half.

Crazy fact: Boaters in the 1970s and 80s swore that soot from “The Stacks” would rain down on their sails if they anchored nearby.

The Big Picture

All four plants were built by LILCO.
All four became tax battlegrounds after LIPA took over.
All four are now under National Grid, with PSEG Long Island running the grid.
And all four are shadows of their former selves, running at minimal capacity as peaker plants while offshore wind projects ramp up.

Crazy Fact Takeaway: From Freeport’s carbon lights to Shoreham’s nuclear disaster to the smokestacks of Northport and Port Jefferson, Long Islanders have lived through every twist in the power story. For generations, our skylines weren’t skyscrapers but stacks — and soon, those stacks may fade into history, replaced by the spinning blades of offshore wind farms off Montauk, marking the Island’s newest and most powerful horizon.

Photo: Fmtownsmarty at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons