By Hellen Zaboulani

Con Edison’s proposal aims to replace roughly 139 miles of wire, and spend $903 million to fortify its network in New York City and Westchester County.  As reported by Crain’s NY, the proposed efforts would aim to protect against severe weather and minimize power outages.  The work would take place between 2025 and 2029, with repairs for about 103 miles (166 kilometers) of overhead wires and another 36 miles (58 kilometers) of underground wires repaired in order to limit outages caused by falling tree branches or debris, Con Ed said in a statement.  Other expenditures will include “raising critical infrastructure; improving the water resiliency of equipment in flood zones; and using technology to improve customer communications during emergencies,” as per Con Ed’s proposal.

The company’s Climate Change Resilience Plan proposes equipment upgrades as part of the “next generation of investments to enhance system resilience and protect its customers from severe heat waves, storms and floods, as the pace of climate change accelerates”, the company’s Nov. 21 proposal states.  The expenditures will focus on disadvantaged communities.  The plans proposed to the New York State Public Service Commission, are a result of Con Edison’s Climate Change Vulnerability Study, which found that temperatures are actually rising quicker than previously predicted.  The research, completed in September, calls climate change a growing problem, and points to the recent Hurricane Ida and Tropical Storm Isaias in demonstrating that severe events are increasingly posing a serious threat to Con Edison’s region in the foreseeable future.  Other upgrades listed by the company in its proposal include: replacing underground transformers and network protectorsn in flood zones to improve the resiliency of the system; splitting cables in the underground delivery system so the cables follow two paths, improving performance during extreme heat; adding two weather-monitoring stations in Westchester County; and adding “green infrastructure” such as rain gardens, permeable pavement, and natural retention ponds to absorb rainwater and reduce flooding on company property.

“Our climate change research with NYSERDA and Columbia University shows that extreme weather in our region is an increasingly urgent threat,” said Tim Cawley, Con Edison’s chairman and CEO. “We must continue to make investments in our system to serve our customers in higher temperatures and more frequent and severe storm conditions. Con Edison is committed to helping New York meet its clean energy goals while also maintaining our industry-leading service reliability and resiliency.”

Con Ed expects to charge customers an added $173 million to their bills between 2025 and 2029 to offset the costs.  That would mean residential bills would increase by about $1.12 per month, for customers using 280 kilowatt hours to about $1.70 for those using 425 kilowatt hours.

The company has already invested over $1.1 billion in storm-fortification since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which is notorious for having been the most devastating storm in the region’s recorded history.  The company’s research has said that those previous investments, made since Sandy, helped prevent roughly 1.2 million customer outages.

Con Ed, founded in 1823 and now traded on the NY Stock Exchange, is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, boasting about $16 billion in annual revenues and $64 billion in assets. The company delivers electricity, natural gas and steam, serving approximately 3.6 million customers in New York City and Westchester County.