Formation in 1936
Ellis Laurimore Phillips, an engineer, and a group of New York City investors, including
George W. Olmsted, founded it. At the time, Long Island had multiple small power utilities that served individual villages; their business plan was to acquire these and interconnect them into an island-wide grid. In 1911, they purchased four small electric companies in
Amityville,
Islip,
Northport and
Sayville. The
Glenwood Generating Station was constructed from 1928 to 1931. The extra generating capacity was needed due to a sixfold increase in Long Island's electricity demand from 1910 to 1925. The expansion also reflected LILCO's then-novel philosophy of using few centralized power plants interconnected by transmission lines, rather than many small plants distributed through the region. In 1936, it was described as "the key electric generating plant of the Long Island system," and its control room managed LILCO's entire system. Four units were also constructed at the
Port Jefferson Power Station between 1948 and 1960. The four units of the
Northport Power Station, constructed between 1967 and 1977, became Long Island's largest power plant. In addition to the large
steam turbine plants, LILCO built a large number of smaller
gas turbine generators in the early 1970s, most of them at the E. F. Barrett Power Station and a new facility in
Holtsville. In 1983, the
Suffolk County legislature resolved that the county could not be safely evacuated in an emergency at the LILCO-built
Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant.{{Cite news
Hurricane Gloria hit Long Island on September 27, 1985, but power was not fully restored until October 8. The utility's poor response to the storm further eroded public confidence in LILCO's ability to handle an emergency and placed increased pressure to shutter the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. Ultimately, in a political decision born from LILCO's inability to present a viable evacuation plan for Suffolk County, Shoreham was closed down in 1992 after never having operated at more than minimum power for testing purposes.
Demise and aftermath On March 5, 1998, final Federal approval was received for LIPA to take over LILCO's electrical transmission network. The deal was completed later that year. LILCO's power distribution assets were bought by the
Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), a
public authority. The rest of LILCO, including its electrical generation and natural gas businesses, merged with
Brooklyn Union Gas to form
KeySpan, which continued to run LILCO's old transmission network under contract with LIPA. KeySpan was taken over by
National Grid USA in 2007. In 2014, National Grid handed control of Long Island's electrical transmission system to
New Jersey utility
Public Service Enterprise Group. == Major power plants ==