Consolidated Edison Co.”™s proposed rate hikes for its 3.2 million customers in New York City and Westchester County has sparked criticism from at least one elected state official, while the county”™s largest business group is taking a wait-and-study approach to what promises to be a volatile public issue over the next year.
In its filing this month with the state Public Service Commission, ConEd proposed to collect an additional $1.2 billion in electric delivery revenue, representing an 11.6 percent average increase in customer bills. The rate increase would take effect next April 1.
A typical residential customer paying $70 per month would see an increase of $12, or about a 17 percent rise. A typical business paying $2,200 per month would see an increase of $235, or about 11 percent, ConEd officials said.
The utility also seeks rate increases of $335 million, or 3.2 percent, in 2009 and $390 million, or 3.7 percent, in 2010.
ConEd officials said the rate hikes are needed to support the company”™s planned $7.5 billion investment over the next five years to expand and enhance its electric-delivery system and maintain “a reliable, resilient and robust infrastructure.” The added revenue also would allow the utility to pursue more demand-reduction and energy-efficiency measures to slow the rising demand for power, ConEd officials said.
“The electrical use in our whole service area has gone up 20 percent in the last 10 years,” said ConEd spokesman Chris Olert. In Westchester, where ConEd supplies 297,000 residential customers and 46,000 businesses, the company projects electrical use will grow 1.5 percent a year over the next four or five years. ConEd had 2,000 more residential customers in Westchester in 2006 than in 2005, Olert said.
ConEd spokesman Michael Clendenin said peak electrical demand in Westchester last year was 1,755 megawatts. Peak demand this year is expected to climb to 1,795 megawatts. Given that 1 megawatt powers about 1,000 homes, “It”™s like adding 40,000 new homes every year to the demand,” he said.
“The time to plan for another lane on the highway is not when you”˜re stuck in a traffic jam,” ConEd”™s Olert said. “We”™ve got to make plans today for 2010, 2015, 2020.” With development booming in Westchester, “The time to invest in the infrastructure is now.”
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Consolidated Edison reported $748 million in profits in 2006.
Assemblyman Adam Bradley, D-White Plains, said ConEd officials need to first address the company”™s “horrible track record” in responding to storm-related power outages and customers”™ repair calls rather than push through a rate hike he called “a tremendous burden on local homeowners and businesses.”
Marsha Gordon, president and chief executive officer of the 1,300-member Business Council of Westchester, said the proposed rate increase “is certainly something the Business Council of Westchester will be studying and looking into. We”™re not taking a position on it yet.”
She noted that ConEd plans to use the added revenue to improve infrastructure reliability
and for energy conservation measures. “We know the system needs to be improved. That”™s what businesses count on, is reliability,” she said.
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