Assembly Member Claire Valdez has joined several elected officials to sign an open letter calling on Con Edison to “stop hindering the development” of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in New York City, with critics claiming that the energy company has made it “prohibitively expensive” to connect systems to New York’s grid.
The Utility Customers Association, which distributed the letter, described the policy as an “effective moratorium” on BESS projects, stating that Con Edison is charging BESS developers tens of millions of dollars in interconnection upgrade fees.
BESS facilities can help alleviate blackouts and brownouts across the city while delivering savings for ratepayers, supporters say. The batteries, which are charged at night, release energy back into the grid during peak hours of electricity use during the day to alleviate the strain on infrastructure.
Con Edison: Risk of overloads in some neighborhoods
Con Edison, however, says that the batteries could overload the grid if they are clustered in the same neighborhood, arguing that a surge of BESS projects in the same area could create new overnight peaks if they all charged at the same time. This would overload neighborhood electric hubs called substations, Con Edison argues…