Advancing New York’s Clean Energy Future with NYISO’S New Class Year

Updated on March 27, 2023

A Class Year is a group of projects seeking to connect to the transmission system that have also met comparable milestones in the NYISO’s planning process.

During a Class Year, the NYISO is required to assess the impact to reliability that new resources may have on the bulk electric system. If upgrades are found to be necessary to maintain reliability, the project developer, not consumers, are required to pay for investments identified through the process. The results of the NYISO’s studies are shared with stakeholders via the Operating Committee.

We project that approximately 80-90 projects will be included in the 2023 Class Year. Collectively, the advancement of these projects reflects the changing nature of the electric system in response to public policies. In the prior Class Year, the NYISO completed study of 53 projects, 27 of which included wind, solar, energy storage, and transmission that selected to move forward to the next step in the interconnection process.

There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of projects seeking to connect to the bulk power system since the passage of the CLCPA in 2019. This increase, which is attributable to public policy mandates, has increased workloads and the time necessary to complete required reliability studies. The interconnection process involves coordinating multi-stakeholder involvement to complete the necessary studies for each project.

In an effort to make the Class Year process more efficient and encourage the development of renewable energy, the NYISO is pursuing reforms under three broad categories:

• Improved and more transparent communication with developers;
• Efficient administration and coordination between parties; and
• Revised scope and structure of the interconnection process to make the Class Year Study and entire process more efficient.

Additional staff has been added to address increasing workloads and the NYISO has launched a series of customer focus groups, facilitating an ongoing exchange of ideas and information with all stakeholders.

While the volume and complexity of projects has rapidly changed in response to the CLCPA, one fundamental aspect of our interconnection planning work remains unchanged: a focus on maintaining reliability during this transition to the clean energy grid of the future.

For questions and more information on the NYISO’s Interconnection and Class Year process, read this white paper.