The New York Power Authority generated 28.13 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2011, with nonpolluting hydropower accounting for 78 percent, according to its just-issued 2011 annual report.

NYPA is in the final stages of a 15-year project at its St. Lawrence-Franklin D. Roosevelt Power Project in Massena, with the refurbishing of all 16 turbine generators and other equipment at a cost of $281 million due to be completed by next year.

Details of other maintenance, “smart grid” developments for modernizing electricity-delivery systems, and NYPA’s investment in a new power line being built by Hudson Transmission Partners from New Jersey to New York City, are included in the infrastructure section.

NYPA says its 2011 energy efficiency efforts cut the state’s demand for electricity by more than 10 megawatts (MW), lowered the annual energy bills of public facilities by about $9 million and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 36,000 tons. For the third consecutive year, NYPA broke its record by financing more than $186 million in energy efficiency and clean energy projects. The expenditures were linked to initiatives at nearly 2,600 public facilities throughout the state.

In 2011, NYPA expanded its Green Power program, purchasing over 230,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy credits from new and existing facilities on behalf of customers looking to “green” their operations or meet state and local mandates. Green Power projects generate electricity from renewable sources, including biomass, waste gas and wind power.

The Power Authority says electricity they generated directly supported nearly 380,000 jobs throughout the state, with more than 9,000 new and existing jobs linked to allocations in 2011 alone. During the year, NYPA established the framework for administering Governor Cuomo’s ReCharge New York Program, which makes available 910 MW of lower-cost power to New York businesses and not-for-profit organizations across the state in return for their retaining and creating jobs and undertaking capital investments.

The authority says that one of its 2001 success stories was a new allocation of low-cost power from NYPA’s St. Lawrence-FDR project to help Upstate Niagara Cooperative, a Western New York food and beverage producer, expand into northern New York at a plant in North Lawrence that had been closed.

The Cooperative, which is owned by 375 dairy farmers and a NYPA power customer since 2005, took over the plant, rehiring 60 workers who’d been laid off and making about $6 million in improvements to the facility, which specializes in yogurt products.

In 2011, NYPA undertook several initiatives associated with agreements reached with local communities and other stakeholders as part of the new federal licenses approved for the St. Lawrence-FDR project, in 2003, and the Niagara project, in 2007. The annual report describes some of these relicensing activities, which include Habitat Improvement Projects, shoreline stabilization efforts and other programs that are helping to protect and enhance the waterways that fuel NYPA’s largest hydropower projects.

The entire annual report is at www.nypa.gov.