Consolidated Edison, Inc. continues to plan for major infrastructure upgrades to meet a broad-based rise in electricity demand in New York City and state clean energy targets, according to the company’s regulatory filings and executives.
State law requires the state’s electric sector to reach 70% renewable energy by 2030 and fully decarbonize by 2040, despite amendments passed earlier this year that watered down some aspects of the law to “reflect the importance of feasibility, cost effectiveness and consumer affordability,” Jen Hensley, ConEd’s senior vice president of corporate affairs, said in an annual presentation for investors in October.
The company released third-quarter earnings on Nov. 5 but, as it has in recent quarters, did not hold a quarterly call to discuss its filing.
To boost system reliability while working towards the state’s clean energy goals, Con Edison has asked regulators to approve a new Reliability Asset Dispatch Rights (RADR) program aimed at distribution-level storage systems and extend a key deadline for adding transmission-connected bulk storage systems.
ConEd and its in-state peer companies have also proposed a framework for New York utilities to collectively develop and own up to 1 GW of land-based renewable energy projects annually, Hensley said.
That would mark a significant shift for New York’s restructured electricity landscape, where electric service companies like ConEd’s utilities generally do not own bulk generation and transmission. But it could help keep New York on track to meet its clean energy goals, Hensley said.
“We believe this would provide a long-term cost-effective strategy for supplying clean energy to customers, and we anticipate a white paper on this topic from the New York State Public Service Commission later this year,” she said.
Calls to ease restrictions on utility ownership of generation have grown in restructured U.S. markets with high power prices and development costs, despite pushback from independent power producers.
Earlier this year, for example, New Hampshire passed a law allowing utilities to own individual gas and nuclear generators under 5 MW capacity. Another New Hampshire bill that would have allowed utilities to own nuclear reactors under 300 MW capacity did not become law. The New York utilities’ proposal is more expansive than either.
Ensuring near-term resource adequacy
With or without clearance for its three electric utilities to own generation, ConEd’s transmission subsidiary plans to make a significant investment in downstate New York’s power supply as a minority partner in the Propel NY Energy project.
The $3.26 billion joint venture with the New York Power Authority and other private developers would add three new substations, an underground transition vault and about 90 miles of underground and submarine 138-kV and 345-kV lines across western Long Island, parts of New York City and suburban Westchester County. The partners aim to finish work by mid-2030, pending state and local approvals.
Still, ConEd executives said more transmission, distribution and energy storage investment will be needed to keep the lights on in the coming years.
Consolidated Edison Company of New York, the ConEd utility serving the five boroughs and Westchester County, projects a capacity shortfall of 125 MW in New York City by 2033, rising to 675 MW by 2036 and 2,275 MW by 2045, Matthew Ketschke, CECONY’s president, told investors.
In July, CECONY filed a reliability contingency plan with state regulators that “includes market-based solutions, including procuring bids for additional transmission connected battery storage systems, creating a new distribution connected battery storage framework and issuing [a request for proposals] for non-storage clean and non-emitting technologies,” Ketschke said.
CECONY is “also planning for, but not seeking authorization for, transmission cooling enhancements that could increase transfer capability of generation from outside New York City by 300 megawatts,” he added.
Unlike other regions where near-term electricity demand growth is driven by large data center and industrial loads, ConEd sees more diffuse building and vehicle electrification driving growth in its territory. For example, new buildings’ electric demand requests are 20% to 25% higher than the historical norm for comparable structures, the company said last week.
ConEd did name a handful of new or expanded large-load customers set to come online soon, however: a new soccer stadium and entertainment complex adding 44 MW in Queens; a “construction and modernization” project adding 93 MW at John F. Kennedy International Airport, also in Queens; and an expanded Port Authority of New York and New Jersey bus terminal adding 42 MW in Manhattan.
As demand grows, ConEd utilities look for ways to increase system capacity without adding new substations, which Ketschke framed as a last resort.
“As the network grows beyond the capacity of the substation serving it, we divide the network in two and build a new substation to serve the new network, but not before we exhaust our toolkit of non-wire solutions, including demand management, battery storage and a host of other measures to avoid costly infrastructure investment,” he said.
But some new substations are inevitable. As a whole, ConEd says it will add 28 new electric substations over the next 10 years to the networks overseen by its electric utility companies, CECONY and Orange & Rockland Utilities.
CECONY, which serves the five boroughs and Westchester County, is in line for nine new substations. O&R, whose two electric utilities’ territories straddle the New York-New Jersey border west of the Hudson River, will get 19, the company said. Both projections are unchanged from the previous quarter.
ConEd’s three electric utilities took in a combined $4.4 billion in electricity revenue in the third quarter, up 8.8% year over year, the company said on Thursday. It’s the second consecutive quarter of strong electricity sales performance for ConEd. The company’s electric utilities grew sales revenue by about 10% year over year in the second quarter of 2026.
