Con Edison arguably has the best electrical delivery system in the world. But superlatives don’t always translate to profits.
As a proud New Yorker, I’m the first to admit we are tough markers, and for Con Ed, which operates like many utilities in a weird public/private role, that means it can never be good enough.
After New York deregulated it’s power companies a decade ago, Consolidated Edison, Inc. became an investor-owned utility answering to its stockholders, while its subsidiary utility company, Consolidated Edison of New York, Inc., continued to provide power transmission and distribution under state and federal regulatory oversight. The regulators monitor the utility’s performance, and use that data to assign investor returns.
To keep the city and the state happy, Con Ed has the best record in the country for delivering power without interruption. Most electric customers outside the New Yorker metropolitan area can expect over an hour of outages a year. In New York they have an average of 20 minutes. And when bad things happen, like ice and snow, power is restored faster here too.
In my ongoing project of writing about all facets of New York’s power infrastructure for SNL Financial, I found out more than you probably ever wanted to know about Con Edison, and how the bar for its performance gets raised higher and higher.
Here’s a copy of my article for the curious. Cheers!
