How New York’s biggest electrical utility is responding to high heat, high demand

On July 2, temper­a­tures in Central Park topped 100 degrees for the first time since 2012, kicking millions of rooftop and window air condi­tioners into over­drive across the five boroughs.

More than 80,000 Con Edison customers lost power during what turned out to be a multi-day stretch of extreme heat, mostly in Queens and the Bronx. In at least one case, ConEd proac­tively shut off power to about 9,800 customers to miti­gate what it called ​“equip­ment prob­lems caused by extreme heat and heavy demand for power.” The utility, which manages the elec­tric distri­b­u­tion grid in New York City and most of Westchester, also reduced voltage across swathes of its system in a bid to protect sensi­tive infrastructure.

Experts say extreme heat curbs power lines’ and trans­formers’ carrying capacity and increases their risk of failure. In response, util­i­ties may reduce line voltage or shut off power alto­gether to avoid blowouts and expe­dite repairs.

Though locally disrup­tive, this year’s outages paled in compar­ison to the wide­spread storm- and heat-related black­outs of the late 20th century. ConEd spokesperson Allan Drury told Skylight that the utility’s ​“continued invest­ments in grid modern­iza­tion and resilience” were paying off, with the ​“vast majority” of its nearly 4 million customers unaf­fected during the record-breaking heat. 

Despite these improve­ments, the service disrup­tions during this summer’s heat waves raise ques­tions about ConEd’s climate readi­ness. In a future where climate adap­ta­tion means more high-heat summers, and climate miti­ga­tion means elec­tri­fying more building systems and shifting more demand onto the elec­trical grid, is New York’s largest elec­trical utility on track to keep up? 

ConEd says yes. The company and its affil­i­ated suburban elec­tric util­i­ties have planned $37.2 billion in system invest­ments over the next 10 years amid expected increases in both elec­tricity demand — from elec­tri­fied heating and trans­porta­tion, in partic­ular — and grid-stressing heat waves as the world warms.

Those invest­ments can miti­gate what Drury called ​“some brief and scat­tered outages” caused by ​“extreme heat and local­ized demand” on the lower-voltage distri­b­u­tion grid ConEd owns and oper­ates, but that’s only taking care of their side of the street, so to speak. They have no direct bearing on the power plants, large-scale energy storage systems and higher-voltage trans­mis­sion lines owned and oper­ated by others.

One of those assets is the newly inau­gu­rated Champlain Hudson Power Express, or CHPE, a 339-mile trans­mis­sion corridor that can carry enough Canadian hydropower to meet 20 percent of New York City’s power demand. The project, which has been in the works in some fashion since at least 2010, has been a corner­stone of New York State’s goals to bring cleaner sources of elec­tricity online, and switch away from fossil fuels.

Though CHPE — pronounced ​“chippy” — was oper­ating normally at the height of the heat­wave, it tripped offline on July 4 and winked in and out of service for most of the rest of the month. 

The outage seemed to vali­date an October warning by the New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit orga­ni­za­tion that runs New York State’s bulk power system, that New York City could face power constraints as soon as this year absent new gener­a­tion and trans­mis­sion capacity. Randy Wolken, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Manufacturers’ Association of New York, said on July 10 that CHPE’s ​“heat-wave test” under­scored the impor­tance of ​“main­taining and expanding reli­able natural gas elec­tricity gener­a­tion to ensure suffi­cient capacity while clean energy resources scale up.”

The state grid oper­ator has already ordered two aging gas- and oil-fired ​“peaker” power plants in New York City to run as needed into 2029, several years past their orig­inal retire­ment dates. For now, it’s counting on these and other down­state fossil fuel plants to run at full tilt during heat waves. Though real-time data isn’t publicly avail­able for indi­vidual plants, statewide figures show fossil fuels met about two-thirds of New York’s peak elec­tricity demand of 31.1 gigawatts at 6 p.m. on July 2. That share is a few ticks higher than a typical summer-day peak. 

But despite the intense heat and humidity, those dirty gener­a­tors — and their cleaner wind‑, water- and nuclear-powered compa­triots — had an easier time last month than during past heat waves. The biggest assist came from ​“behind the meter” solar arrays, including panels installed on indi­vidual commer­cial and resi­den­tial build­ings around New York. The grid oper­ator says these arrays supplied about 14 percent of the state’s power — 4.2 gigawatts — at 3 p.m. on July 2, and 4 percent at the 6 p.m. peak.

Virtually all of that juice came from panels installed since July 19, 2013, when the New York grid hit an all-time demand peak just shy of 34 gigawatts and solar provided a trivial 101 megawatts (or 0.1 gigawatts) at 3 p.m.

Those newer systems saved New York ratepayers ​“on the order of $200 million,” Doreen Harris, pres­i­dent and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), said in an inter­view with Spectrum News last month. 

Once installed, solar systems are cheaper to run than old peaker plants because they don’t consume fuel — a major expense for gas- and oil-fired gener­a­tors — and require far less main­te­nance. They also reduce reliance on imported power, which gener­ally costs more when demand is high.

“It is a simple supply and demand problem. The less supply we have, which forces us to rely on the most expen­sive ways to generate power, the more people will pay, espe­cially during peak hot and cold spells,” Marguerite Wells, exec­u­tive director of Alliance for Clean Energy New York, told Skylight. 

The value of fuel-free gener­a­tion is that much clearer amid conflicts in oil- and gas-rich parts of the world, Wells added.

“The more energy supply spread throughout the state, the less we rely on fuel-based sources subject to global insta­bility,” she said. ​“Let’s do more of that.”

New York does want to do more of that. Despite head­winds at the federal level, statewide distrib­uted solar capacity — those behind-the-meter systems, plus larger commu­nity solar instal­la­tions — hit 8 gigawatts earlier this year. A 2.7‑gigawatt devel­op­ment pipeline, newly-simpli­fied inter­con­nec­tion stan­dards for systems under 5 megawatts and $200 million in funding for the NY-Sun solar incen­tive program in next year’s budget all but ensure New York comfort­ably exceeds its offi­cial target of 10 gigawatts by 2030.

New York City wants to do its fair share, too. 

ConEd’s early-July hiccups ​“under­score the need for a compre­hen­sive New York City strategy to deploy distrib­uted energy resources,” Karen Imas, director of climate and resiliency policy with the city comptroller’s office, said in a report released three weeks later. 

Nearly 15,000 city-owned rooftops, parking lots, fleet depots and other public facil­i­ties ​“repre­sent signif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for solar gener­a­tion, battery storage, resilience hubs, and revenue-gener­ating public-private part­ner­ships,” Imas said. 

But as of now, deploy­ment isn’t happening fast enough to meet the city’s clean energy goals, despite a local law requiring city agen­cies to install 150 megawatts of solar on public build­ings by 2035. Red tape — ​“lengthy agency permit­ting processes” at FDNY and a slow, opaque process to connect distrib­uted batteries to ConEd’s grid — stands in the way, Imas said. 

To make real progress in cleaning up its power supply, Imas said the city will need to pair a scaled-up distrib­uted resource port­folio with central­ized infra­struc­ture like CHPE and Empire Wind, the 810-megawatt offshore project expected to come online next year. (Propel NY, a trans­mis­sion project designed in part to funnel offshore wind power to western Long Island, the five boroughs and lower Westchester, could power up in 2030.) 

The time for talk, she said, is over.

“New York City is at a crit­ical moment in its clean energy tran­si­tion,” Imas said. ​“The chal­lenge facing New York City today is less about setting goals and more about accel­er­ating and scaling deployment.”