PSC: Reforming the Energy Vision

Sep 19 - Times Union (Albany, NY)

A revolution is quietly under way in Albany to turn electric utilities on their head.

In an effort to stem rising and unpredictable utility bills and lower the cost of power for businesses, state regulators are telling utilities that the old way of doing business isn't going to work anymore.

"We're very concerned about prices," Audrey Zibelman , chair of the state Public Service Commission , said Thursday at the Sagamore Resort on Lake George . "We want electricity to remain affordable."

Zibelman, who did not say how much the state is seeking to save, was speaking at a forum about the future of energy regulation in the state organized by the Business Council of New York State . She said that instead of having electric utilities spend billions of dollars every year installing new substations and power lines and other equipment, they are being asked to get more creative.

The PSC calls it Reforming the Energy Vision, or REV, and it's part of a move by the Cuomo administration toward an electric system that relies more on smaller-scale power sources built where they are needed most instead of an expensive electrical grid and large power plants that are only utilized 60 percent of the time.

"You have a system that is highly inefficient," Zibelman said.

The new model relies on new technologies that can deliver electricity to homes and businesses more efficiently and at a cheaper cost. And it also relies on opening up the electric grid to more ideas and competition, just like deregulation of the phone industry brought on the Internet revolution and new devices like the iPhone.

The concept is about to be tested in New York City , where Consolidated Edison is trying to deal with a surge in customer demand for power in the Brownsville area of Brooklyn .

Under the old model, ConEd would have to build a new $1 billion substation and extra equipment and power lines to bring extra power to the area, costs that would be passed onto all of its customers, even those outside of Brooklyn .

Instead, ConEd is proposing an alternative plan that would cost under $500 million and would include the installation of advanced batteries that would store power from the grid when the demand for power is low and having third parties install fuel cells or combined heat and power systems in the area to generate added power right where it is needed.

"That's the sort of thing we want utilities to do," Zibelman said.

In addition to being a cheaper solution, such a distributed power system protects better against storms that can shut down whole transmission lines and power plants, creating blackouts in large areas of the state. Under a distributed model, neighborhoods and cities become so-called microgrids that aren't as reliant on far-away power plants.

"We need a system that is resilient," Zibelman said.

lrulison@timesunion.com , 518-454-5504, @larryrulison

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