A fight between Con Ed and developers is slowing NYC’s battery buildout

New York City's utility, Con Edison, and companies that build grid-scale batteries are in a dispute that's slowing down battery projects across the city. Con Ed changed its connection rules last August and again in November, and developers say the new costs to hook up batteries to the grid have jumped as much as fourteenfold in some cases. Industry groups say this has stalled roughly $1.5 billion in battery investment and have asked state regulators to force Con Ed to reverse the changes.

Con Ed says the restrictions are necessary because a flood of battery projects — requests have tripled in two years, adding up to nearly 2.5 gigawatts — could overwhelm parts of its grid if they all draw power at once. Battery developers counter that this ignores how flexible batteries actually are, since they can be scheduled to charge and discharge in ways that avoid straining the grid. Con Ed is now asking regulators to approve a new program, called Reliability Asset Dispatch Rights, that would let the utility control when batteries charge and discharge in exchange for paying developers a set rate, rather than letting developers run their batteries to maximize profit.

For homeowners, this fight doesn't require any action on your part, but it matters because these community-scale batteries are meant to improve grid reliability during heat waves and could help retire polluting power plants in some neighborhoods. The dispute is one reason New York is falling behind its state goal of building 6 gigawatts of energy storage by 2030.