NYISO BLOG

Columbia University’s Daniel Zarrilli knows a thing or two about New York City and the effects of climate change.

The impact of January’s polar vortex on electric systems across the nation is a lesson in preparing New York’s grid for future winter reliability needs.

As New York works towards the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), the NYISO continues to support the development of renewable resources, transmission projects, and new market design initiatives to deliver the grid of the future. Keeping the lights on in homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools across the state is essential as we strive to decarbonize the grid.

In 2023, the NYISO continued to address the challenges associated with balancing new electricity demand growth and accelerating retirements of existing generators with the slow pace of new generation construction. It was a year of important planning studies, identifying and solving for reliability issues in New York City, and keeping a close watch on major infrastructure projects like the Champlain Hudson Power Express that will help support the transition to a decarbonized electric system. As we begin the important work of the year ahead, here are some important milestones from 2023.

You might say Nicole Bouchez’s role as the NYISO’s Consumer Interest Liaison and Senior Principal Economist combines deep data analytics with good, old-fashioned customer service.

Helping to educate the next generation of energy leaders is an important part of what we do, and a key element of our community outreach program. Our team was excited to host students and teachers from Middleburgh High School on December 14 for a control room tour and conversation about the grid of the future.

As temperatures and snowflakes fall across New York, it's important to highlight a recent study by our team of experts, which examines how the grid is expected to perform during the 2023-2024 winter season.

Brad Jones, former NYISO President and CEO, passed away on Wednesday, November 8.

In this episode of our Power Trends podcast, Julie Tighe discusses her role leading the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV), and her recent addition to the NYISO’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC). The EAC, which was formed in 2005, provides information and analysis on state and federal environmental policies relative to NYISO’s mission of grid reliability.

The following op-ed was originally published in Crain’s New York Business on October 30, 2023.

Interconnecting new generation and transmission projects at the scale necessary to meet the goals set forth in New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is a challenging task. According to our 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook, at least 111 gigawatts of renewable resources will need to be online by 2040. That’s three times larger than the 37.4 gigawatts in generating capacity that exists on the grid today. Additionally, more transmission will be required to move that energy from areas of generation to load pockets. To meet these challenges, we are taking several steps to improve the interconnection process.

State and federal policies promoting renewable energy and decarbonization of the grid are driving historic investments in the electric system. Here in New York, a record number of new wind, solar, and battery storage facilities are seeking to connect to the electric grid.

We know the electric system is essential to the state’s economy and provides for the health and safety of all New Yorkers. We also know that delivering a cleaner, greener grid of the future is just as important. State climate policies to address extreme weather require a decarbonized electric system by 2040. Reaching that mandate while keeping the system reliable is at the heart of all that we do.

New York’s recent peak day for electricity consumption came during a heatwave, as millions of people relied on their air conditioners to keep cool. That’s not unusual. However, some of the circumstances leading up to that day still provided a challenge.  

Reaching a 100% emission-free grid by 2040 is an ambitious goal; the challenge of our lifetime.

On August 14, 2003, a transmission line fault in Ohio caused by contact with a tree cascaded into what would become one of the largest outages in North American history plunging more than 50 million people in eight states and Ontario into darkness.

In our latest podcast, we sat down with Rana Mukerji, NYISO’s SVP of Market Structures, to learn about his journey from growing up in Calcutta, India to becoming widely regarded as one of the ­­industry's leading designers of electricity markets. We ask Rana about his past career experience working for General Electric and ABB, and how the markets must evolve to accommodate a new set of renewable resources while keeping the grid reliable.

On July 14, 2023, the New York ISO issued its Short-Term Assessment of Reliability for the second quarter of 2023 (Q2 STAR). The Q2 STAR assessed conditions on the bulk electric system in New York over a five-year study period of April 15, 2023, through April 15, 2028, considering forecasts of peak power demand, planned upgrades to the transmission system, and changes to the generation mix over the next five years.

For some time now, the NYISO has been reporting on declining reliability margins on New York’s grid, noting that New York City, in particular, is at increased risk of outages as soon as 2025. On July 14, 2023, we published the findings from our second quarter 2023 Short-Term Assessment of Reliability (STAR) report. We found that through updates to our analysis margins in New York City disappear altogether in summer 2025. This required us to declare a “reliability need” in order to avoid outages and disruptions to New Yorkers’ power supply. But, how does the NYISO identify these types of concerns?

New York State has embarked on an ambitious journey towards a zero-emissions power grid by 2040. The timeframe seems so distant and the goal so overwhelming that it’s hard to know sometimes if we’re making progress. While plenty of work remains to decarbonize the grid, in some ways many of the small steps the state has already taken are contributing to significant changes in how the grid is supplied.