Con Edison cites investments, workforce ensured improved reliability in 2023

Con Edison met its reliability targets in 2023, according to data recently released by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC), and said major investments, coupled with its dedicated workforce ensured the company’s improved performance.

“Our industry-leading reliability is the result of our strategic investments and the dedication of our talented, diverse workforce,” said Con Edison President Matthew Ketschke. “We are delivering the safe, reliable service our customers need and expect as we transition to a clean energy future.”

A subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc., one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, Con Edison delivers electricity, natural gas, and steam, serving 3.7 million customers in New York City and Westchester County.

The New York PSC reported that Con Edison’s 2023 network frequency performance improved 33 percent over its 2022 performance, according to the PSC’s Office of Resilience and Emergency Preparedness 2023 Electric Reliability Performance Report, released in June.

Likewise, the utility’s network duration performance saw a two percent improvement over its 2022 performance, the report said.

“When compared to their 2022 performance, network systems in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan experienced less frequent outages, while duration improved in Brooklyn, Bronx, and Manhattan,” according to the report.

The PSC says the largest contributing events that impacted Con Edison’s network performance continued to be underground equipment failures in manholes during the winter and cable burnouts during the summer.

For instance, equipment issues in the underground system are harder to identify than on the overhead system and generally don’t materialize until an outage occurs, the PSC said.

The commission noted that Con Edison specifically addresses interruptions due to equipment failure within the underground system via several capital programs focused on proactively replacing poorly performing equipment, such as vintage cable types, outdated splices and joints, and obsolete underground switches.

The PSC pointed to one such proactive replacement program called Con Edison’s Underground Secondary Rebuild Program, which removes and replaces specific types of main cables in the company’s underground secondary system that are associated with manhole events.

“This proactive replacement both reduces the possibility of an outage and mitigates the public safety risk associated with these types of cable,” the report says. “In 2023, Con Edison rebuilt 15 underground distribution structures, significantly more than it rebuilt in 2022.”

The commission found that the typical Con Edison customer would experience an outage once every nine years based on the company’s performance in 2023. The state figures do not include outages caused by major storms or snow and ice events that affect the underground electric delivery system.

The PSC report also tracked utilities’ reliability over the last five years, and determined that Con Edison’s service was nearly seven times as reliable as the service of other electric delivery companies in the state from 2019 to 2023.

Con Edison said on Tuesday that it maintains reliability through robust investments in underground and overhead cables and transformers, substation equipment, circuit breakers and other components.

This summer, for example, the company has invested $2.3 billion, and said that its crews have installed submersible transformers that stay in service during heavy flooding; installed stronger poles and wiring; built walls around low-lying equipment; and installed smart switches to limit outages.

The company is also installing switches on its underground power lines in Brooklyn and Queens to limit outages, saying these “interrupters” detect faults on cables and take a portion of a cable out of service, limiting the number of customers affected.

Crews are also placing overhead wires and equipment underground to protect them from overhead storms that bring heavy winds, rain, and snow, said Con Edison.

The utility also conducted a Climate Change Vulnerability Study with Columbia University that indicated increased heat represents the biggest, immediate threat to its reliability. By 2030, New York City will experience up to 17 days a year with temperatures of 95 degrees or higher, the study projects, up from four days a year historically.

Based on these findings, Con Edison has proposed to the PSC approximately $903 million in reliability investments between 2025 and 2029.

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