New York power

Produced 76.6 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 — enough electricity for about 7,700 homes for a year.*

Air quality & health in Suffolk County

Suffolk County has a population of 1,523,170. Across five conditions the American Lung Association tracks — childhood asthma, adult asthma, COPD, lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease — it reports a combined 316,289 cases in the county.

The county received a grade of F for ozone pollution. For particle pollution — the fine soot and dust that can be breathed deep into the lungs — it received a grade of A.

Federal monitoring recorded 235 days of good air quality and 76 moderate days in the county over the most recent year, with 3 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

Pinelawn Power in West Babylon is one of New York’s 100 natural gas plants, and it ranks #40 of 100 by the electricity it produced in 2024. It has run since 2005 as a combined cycle plant, meaning it captures waste heat from burning gas to make a second round of electricity.

In 2024 it produced 76.6 gigawatt-hours, a gigawatt-hour being a very large unit of electricity, which is about 7,700 homes’ worth of power for a year. Its two generators have a capacity of 82.0 MW, a megawatt being the most power it can deliver at once, and its capacity factor of 11 percent describes how much of that maximum it actually delivered across the year.

Generation profile

The plant can produce 82 megawatts of electricity at once, across 2 generating units. In 2024 it produced 76.6 gigawatt-hours in total, which works out to about 11% of what it could have produced running flat out all year — the pattern of a plant that runs only during periods of high demand.

Nearby places worth exploring

West Babylon sits on Long Island’s South Shore in Suffolk County. Within the county you’ll find Fire Island’s beaches and Stony Brook University, and farther east are the Hamptons, Montauk Point, and the North Fork wine country.

Local school district

Wyandanch 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.