NYISO capped off a roller coaster of a year full of reliability needs, the Demand Curve Reset and contentious stakeholder meetings by announcing a new record level for hourly wind power generation on Dec. 16.

The grid operator reported that 2,309 MW were generated from 30 wind power facilities at 11 p.m. This served 14.4% of energy demand statewide. The previous record of 2,213 MW was set in November.

With more wind power on the way, NYISO’s latest Public Policy Transmission Need seeks to get up to 8 GW of offshore wind into New York City by 2033. It received four bids from the New York Power Authority, New York Transco, Viridon New York and energyRE Giga-Projects USA. The ISO will spend most of 2025 evaluating and selecting projects. A draft report on the top projects will be released between the second and third quarters, with a final decision by the Board of Directors by the end of the year.

NYISO’s early 2025 will likely be dominated by the Reliability Needs Assessment process again. Now that the board has accepted the results of the RNA, which identified a reliability need in New York City starting in summer 2033, the ISO will seek system updates to try to address the need without opening a formal solicitation process. This will incorporate any ongoing or planned upgrades, generation additions and other changes that might address the need.

If this is not sufficient to address the reliability need, NYISO will seek solutions to fix the issue. This would trigger an additional process that looks at the proposed solutions and eventually culminate in the development of a Comprehensive Reliability Plan. The CRP then serves as the blueprint for system reliability for the next 10 years, up to and including ranking any solutions to the need if it still exists.

At the same time, NYISO will continue to update its quarterly Short-Term Assessment of Reliability reports, the most recent of which found the continued operation of two generators on the Gowanus Canal and two barge-based peakers to be necessary for reliability. These peakers were supposed to close because of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s “peaker rule” by May 1. NYISO is keeping them active for an initial period of up to two additional years until “permanent solutions to the need” are in place.

NYISO 2025 Projects and Developments

May 1 also marks when the DCR is due to go into effect.

Pending FERC approval, the reset will redraw the demand curves for wholesale electricity based on the estimated cost of a proxy peaker plant, which for the first time has been designated a battery by NYISO.

The previous 2021-2025 DCR was challenged by a lawsuit because of FERC’s rejection of NYISO’s amortization period. It is unclear if any parties, including FERC, will issue changes or challenges to the new demand curve, but the selection of a battery as the proxy unit was controversial with stakeholders.

NYISO also will be involved in nested planning projects throughout the year. The third year of the Coordinated Grid Planning Process with the New York Public Service Commission and utilities will see a report in the fall or winter. This report will highlight the least-cost planning assessment for transmission upgrades and solutions across the state.

Simultaneously, NYISO will be implementing FERC Order 1920, which requires NYISO to change its regional transmission planning process to examine long-term needs over a 20-year horizon. The ISO expects to file its compliance with FERC in mid-2025.

This year also marks the first in which NYISO’s new interconnection study cluster process will go into effect. The ISO hopes it will streamline and expedite the backlogged interconnection queue. The big change is that interconnection requests are being examined in clusters as opposed to individually. Projects also have a limited number of “midstream” modifications they can make to avoid bogging down the rest of the cluster.

Beyond the ISO

There are several other developments in New York to keep an eye on in 2025.

Smart Path Connect, a major NYPA and National Grid transmission project, is due to finish its rebuild of 100 miles of lines in April. The new substations for the project are due to be energized in the fall 2025 and spring 2026. When completed the project will allow an additional 1,000 MW of energy to travel across the state.

Raya Salter, an environmental justice advocate serving on the New York Department of Public Service’s Energy Policy Planning Advisory Council, told RTO Insider she would push to get environmental justice issues folded into the transmission planning process. In a report developed in collaboration with the Columbia Climate School, she identified gaps in the planning process that hinder meeting the state’s environmental justice goals under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.