Wire
Assembly Member Shrestha bill would add grid-use checks
Assembly Member Sarahana Shrestha’s bill would ask regulators to review how hard New York’s electric system is working, including peak demand, power lost in delivery and constrained circuits.
New York utilities would have to put hard numbers on how efficiently the electric grid is being used. The proposal would amend the public service law by adding a new section 4-c and require each electric or combination electric-and-gas utility corporation to petition the Public Service Commission for approval of electric grid utilization metrics.
The filing would have to give regulators an overview of the metrics and an assessment of current distribution and transmission performance compared with the best use of existing grid assets. That includes industry-standard measures such as peak load versus total distribution capacity, electricity lost during distribution and the condition of constrained circuits.
The numbers behind the wires
The bill spells out the kinds of measurements utilities would have to bring forward: the ratio of peak load to total distribution electric grid capacity, the ratio of current load delivered to total potential deliverable load, the percentage of kilowatt-hours lost during distribution, an analysis of constrained circuits and an evaluation of how the system performs at peak demand.
Once those metrics are on the table, the commission would be able to decide whether to approve them and how to use them when reviewing the utilities’ performance and infrastructure. The point is to turn an abstract debate about grid strain into a set of numbers that can be checked, compared and argued over in public.