Dive Brief:
- The distribution-level interconnection framework Consolidated Edison rolled out last year has effectively halted distributed energy storage deployments across 85% of its service territory, two clean energy groups told New York regulators last week.
- The New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium and New York Solar Energy Industries Association asked the New York Department of Public Service in a March 11 “emergency” petition to restrict Con Edison from applying a “two-part test” that they said unduly burdened BESS projects seeking grid connections in downstate New York.
- Con Edison has not yet filed a response with the DPS. In a Jan. 14 filing, it said its interconnection queue for BESS projects of 5 MW or less had surged 300% in two years to 2.5 GW, or about 25% of New York City’s peak load in 2024. As a result, more than 20 of its 63 substations are at or near hosting capacity limits, it said.
Dive Insight:
Raghu Sudhakara, Con Edison’s vice president for distributed resource integration, said in an email that the interconnection framework NY-BEST and NYSEIA oppose is designed to ensure battery storage provides real economic value for the utility’s customers, “not just economic value to storage developers.”
“This is fundamentally about energy affordability for our customers … [e]nergy storage delivers its greatest value when it reduces peak demand and defers infrastructure upgrades or integrates renewable generation efficiently as more clean resources come online,” Sudhakara said. “The grid has been built to serve customers, not to host battery storage anywhere, at any scale.”
In the January filing, Con Edison said 65% of distributed BESS capacity in its queue as of the end of 2025 would be supplied by just 10 substations, generally in areas “where land costs and zoning make building storage projects more affordable for developers.”
Those installations would likely seek to charge overnight on cheaper off-peak power, Con Edison said. That could create new overnight load peaks that exceed current daytime peaks, necessitating costly infrastructure upgrades, the utility said.
Late last summer, Con Edison notified BESS developers that it had identified potential future constraints around 28 substations that could affect pending interconnection applications, NY-BEST and NYSEIA said last week. In October, the utility added a “two-part test” to its interconnection study methodology that would determine whether a BESS project would “create an area station or sub-transmission peak” and/or exceed a 70% area station or sub-transmission reliability threshold, the groups said. Thirty-four projects totaling 161 MW received “unsolicited re-studies” under the new framework that resulted in “an average $21 million, or 14-fold, increase in upgrade costs per project,” they added.
In a letter published shortly after the emergency petition and first reported by New York Focus, four state legislators, three members of the New York City Council and more than a dozen environmental and clean energy groups joined NY-BEST and NYSEIA in calling for Con Edison to “immediately revert” to the earlier interconnection study methodology and “roll back” interconnection studies made under the new methodology.
For interconnections that pose challenges “under the current operating framework,” the signatories asked Con Edison to “work expeditiously with regulators and grid management experts” to develop “reforms” consistent with the ongoing DPS proceeding on reliability contingency planning in New York City.
DPS initiated that proceeding in December to address reliability issues that the New York Independent System Operator says could arise as soon as this year. It asked Con Edison to develop by this summer “a comprehensive portfolio of solutions that prioritizes and leverages all available clean and non-emitting options, including, but not limited to, demand side management … energy storage, distributed renewable resources, and other non-emitting generation resources.”
Even if the 816-MW Empire Wind project and transmission upgrades currently in development or under construction come online as planned, New York City’s load zone could be short 148 MW in 2030 due to the deactivation of two aging fossil power plants with 672 MW in combined capacity, the NYISO said.
Con Edison appears more open to working with developers of larger-scale energy storage projects that could alleviate reliability issues on the transmission grid.
Elevate Renewables has BESS projects in development across three of New York City’s five boroughs, including one it expects to come online later this year at the 842-MW Arthur Kill gas-fired power plant, Chief Commercial Officer Will Mitchell said in an interview.
Mitchell said Con Edison has “been an excellent partner” on its transmission-connected projects.
“After many years of BESS being talked about in New York City, we're now seeing waves of large-scale projects getting approved,” he said. “We commend Con Ed and look forward to working with them.
