New York electricity rates

New York runs its own wholesale market, NYISO, and a statewide average badly misrepresents what is happening inside it.

Upstate has abundant hydro at Niagara and the St. Lawrence plus large nuclear units in the west, and its wholesale prices are among the lowest in the Northeast. New York City and Westchester are a separate world: a transmission-constrained load pocket where in-city generation must run for reliability, land and labour costs are extreme, and the distribution network is largely underground.

Underground networks are the quiet driver of downstate delivery rates. Replacing a feeder in Manhattan costs an order of magnitude more than restringing an overhead line, and the city's reliability standards are the strictest in the country.

The closure of Indian Point removed a large, low-cost, zero-emission generator close to the load centre. Replacement energy has come substantially from gas plants further away, which raised both the energy price and the congestion charge on transmission into the city.

The state's climate law requires a rapid shift to zero-emission electricity, and the transmission needed to move upstate and offshore generation into the downstate load pocket is the single largest capital programme in the state's energy sector.

If you are comparing New York against another state, use your own utility's rate rather than the state average. The spread between Consolidated Edison and a western New York utility exceeds the spread between many entire states.

New York has full retail choice through its ESCO market, but the Public Service Commission has repeatedly tightened the rules after finding that residential ESCO customers paid more on average than utility supply customers. Treat offers accordingly.

The state's low-income discount is applied automatically when a household is enrolled in certain benefit programmes, but only if the utility has been told. It is one of the more commonly missed savings in the state.