The New York Public Service Commission on Thursday approved more than $70 million in electric bill relief over the summer for low-income Consolidated Edison customers in New York City and Westchester County (20-M-0231).

The commission also initiated a proceeding to identify and address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on utility and other regulated services and programs statewide (20-M-0266).

“Since the start of the pandemic and the economic downturn, the commission has acted to respond to the most pressing COVID-related impacts for customers on a timely basis as these issues have emerged,” PSC Chair John B. Rhodes said. “With this action today, we continue to enable prompt responses on pressing needs for relief and adjustments, as well as dealing with the full range of the impacts in a comprehensive, thoughtful and thorough manner.”

New York City had petitioned the PSC for bill relief for the more than 400,000 customers enrolled in Con Ed’s low-income bill discount program for the months of June through September. The program is intended to remove financial impediments of using air conditioning this summer when officials expect limited availability of public facilities such as cooling centers and public pools as a result of the pandemic. The population density of the city makes these public facilities crucial during the hot summer months, Rhodes said.

The emergency summer cooling credit will add up to $40/month in relief, which, for most customers, is more than double the size of the current low-income program bill discount.

“It is my suspicion that the population of low-income customers eligible for this program or for any number of programs will grow substantially,” Commissioner John Howard said. “There’s a very real possibility that the dollars we have set aside for the program may not go far enough as we move into the summer.”

2019 Reliability and Safety Scores

Con Ed and New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) were the only utilities that failed to meet their reliability targets in 2019, the PSC reported last week.

The report on 2019 Electric Reliability Performance in New York State relies on two primary metrics to measure electric performance: System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI or frequency) and the Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI or duration) (20-E-0045).

The most significant events influencing reliability performance, outside of major storms, were two significant outages Con Ed incurred last summer. Some 72,000 customers on Manhattan lost power for three to five hours on July 13, 2019, as Con Ed lost six networks. On July 21, 2019, it de-energized customers in Brooklyn during a heat wave, impacting 30,000 customers for an average of 11.5 hours.

Excluding major storms, the statewide interruption duration for 2019 was 2.05 hours, an increase from 2018’s 1.96 hours and five-year average of 1.94 hours. Excluding Con Ed, the 2019 average was 1.88 hours, the same as 2018 and close to the five-year average.

Department of Public Service staff are investigating the Manhattan and Brooklyn outages and developing recommendations for improvements. (See Con Ed: Failed Relay Protections Caused NYC Blackout.)

Excluding storms, the statewide interruption frequency for 2019 was the same as 2018 and five-year average, with equipment failures, tree contacts, and accidents or events not under the utility’s control responsible for 83% of interruptions.

Con Ed and NYSEG failed to meet their reliability targets for outage frequency, and Con Ed also failed to meet its target for outage duration. Tree contacts and equipment failures were responsible for more than two-thirds of NYSEG’s interruptions.

Rochester Gas & Electric will be penalized $525,000 for failing to meet its targets for estimated meter reads and answering customer service calls in 30 seconds.

“While most utilities are doing a good job providing safe and reliable service, three utilities have fallen short of our expectations in certain areas, and we will continue to act aggressively to ensure utilities improve performance,” Rhodes said. “This is a foundationally important topic, and I’m very eager to see us resume progress.”

Commissioner Diane Burman said the presentations on customer service performance, electric reliability and electric safety standards were “very helpful to us, especially as we look to further planning and refinement as necessary. It’s also helpful, as the focus is on the major causes of interruption that may occur from the past year that may have timely information on the status of any pending matters that we may be looking at.”

Stray Voltage

DPS staff also delivered the 2019 Electric Safety Standards Performance report, whose special focus on testing stray voltage from streetlights highlighted the increasing ownership of such lighting by municipalities (20-E-0098).

In 2019, manual stray voltage testing was performed on approximately 1 million utility facilities statewide, resulting in the identification of only 302 stray voltage conditions, all of which were quickly remediated, the report said. In addition, the utilities also performed mobile scans in major cities, and all stray voltage findings from those surveys were remediated.

“This is a reassuring report,” Commissioner James S. Alesi said. “All of the utilities are following testing standards for stray voltage, and these efforts are successful to the extent that no revenue adjustments have been required, so that’s good news.”

Howard said that he had “a little personal history with this issue.”

“In the ’90s when I was working in the legislature, there was a serious problem with stray voltage, ranging from people and pets being injured in New York City, largely related to streetlight issues, as well as to cows being shocked upstate,” Howard said. “It’s very gratifying that over this period that has been greatly improved for the safety of the public.”

Howard added two cautionary notes.

“First, to echo Commissioner Burman’s comments regarding as municipalities take over the responsibility for owning and operating their streetlighting systems, they understand that along with the savings goes the responsibility of maintaining the streetlighting system to a very high standard,” he said.

“The second item is — and it goes hand in hand with my first comment — is as we build out the 5G network across the state, it largely will be connected to streetlights,” Howard said. “That work will largely be done by third-party vendors; we should put particular emphasis on how the 5G buildout is done, and that no safety issues occur because of bad practices that may occur from one or more vendors.”