Con Edison Faces $25 Million in Penalties for 2019 Power Outages in New York

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, on Nov 19 announced that Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc. faces $25 million in penalties as well as possible license revocation for failure to respond to outages in July 2019 that left over 100,000 customers without power for two days. The potential penalty is in addition to the $15 million in revenue reductions already applied to the company due to the same outages.

The outages in question occurred on Jul 13 and Jul 21 within the Manhattan and Flatbush areas of New York City, thereby curtailing public transport operations, traffic lights, and a number of businesses’ and public venues. In light of the power failures, the state’s Department of Public Service conducted a 13-month long investigation, resulting in 13 recommendations for the Manhattan outage and 27 recommendations concerning the Flatbush outage. Outages in non-storm conditions require a higher level of scrutiny and reprimand, and hence call into question the utility’s capacity during severe storms and inclement weather.

Con Edison has 30 days to respond regarding the retribution as well as the feasibility and actionability of the recommendations highlighted in the erstwhile reports.  If levied, the $25 million penalty, one of the largest issued by the commission, would be paid by the utility’s shareholders, and not from ratepayer funds borne by customers.