New York power

Produced 1,149.5 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 — enough electricity for about 110,000 homes for a year.*

Air quality & health in Nassau County

Nassau County has a population of 1,381,715. Across five conditions the American Lung Association tracks — childhood asthma, adult asthma, COPD, lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease — it reports a combined 287,550 cases in the county.

Federal monitoring recorded 1 days of good air quality and 0 moderate days in the county over the most recent year, with 0 days rated unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Long-term exposure to air pollution has been linked to certain health conditions, particularly for children and older adults. Where electricity comes from affects how much combustion pollution is produced on the grid.

These figures describe the county as a whole and are not specific to this facility. Sources: American Lung Association – State of the Air (New York); U.S. EPA Air Quality Index.

The story behind this New York power plant

New York has 100 natural gas plants, and E F Barrett in Island Park ranks #17 of 100 by the electricity it produced in 2024. It began operating in 1956 and is owned by National Grid Generation LLC. It sits on McCarthy Road in Nassau County and draws water from the Barnum Island Channel.

In 2024, Barrett produced 1,149.5 gigawatt-hours, which is about 110,000 homes’ worth of electricity (a gigawatt-hour is a billion watts used for an hour, a common way to measure a power plant’s output). Its capacity is 669.2 MW (a megawatt is a million watts, the most the plant can produce at once). Barrett uses a combustion turbine, which spins on hot burning gas much like a jet engine, and a steam turbine, which spins on steam made from heated water.

Generation profile

The plant can produce 669 megawatts of electricity at once, across 13 generating units. In 2024 it produced 1,149.5 gigawatt-hours in total, which works out to about 20% of what it could have produced running flat out all year — the pattern of a plant that runs through much of the year.

Nearby places worth exploring

Island Park sits on Long Island’s South Shore, not far from Jones Beach State Park and the city of Long Beach along the Atlantic shore. Inland in Nassau County, you’ll find Old Westbury Gardens and Hofstra University.

Local school district

Island Park Union Free School District

Common questions

* Homes-powered and emissions comparisons are annual estimates based on national averages from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Homes powered” describes a quantity of electricity, not direct service to specific households. How we calculate this.