Since New York de-regulated the electric markets, there are many electric suppliers and somehow, electricity has to get from suppliers to my house. This is where the electric grid comes into play, managed by New York Independent System Operator or NYISO.
Before I started looking into my power bill in detail I never would have imagined that an electric grid could be interesting. But the fact is that we don’t exist without an electric grid. The electric grid, next to our water supply are the most fundamental purposes of government. There are regional ISOs all over the country and they are critical to both basic life and the energy trading markets.
I haven’t seen a more clear picture of the state of energy markets in New York than by looking at the NY ISO Real Time Dashboard. Here’s a snap shot of one data set from the dashboard.
Look at all the cool data in this tiny chart! From this chart we can see that renewable energy makes up 31.36% of the electricity supply in New York, with 73% of renewable power coming from hydroelectric. Nuclear power, which New York is doing its best to phase out, makes up nearly a quarter of the energy supply in our grid while 43% of our power comes from fossil fuels.
Why does New York have so much hydroelectric power? Niagara falls, baby? Since 1881 we’ve been pumping out hydro electric power in New York, just ask Google! All of the hydroelectric generation capacity in New York is owned and operated by the New York Power Authority. NYPA is an independent agency that self-funds from the incredibly high electric rates we pay in New York and maintains a monopoly on generation that began back in 1907!
Why am I talking about all this? Because when we get into the discussion of energy supply choice, it’s important to understand the sources of energy we are actually choosing.
Keep in mind that there is no way to direct energy from a source in way way upstate New York, to my house in White Plains. Energy isn’t like internet traffic – it can’t be routed with an address. Therefore, when we choose an energy supplier, we aren’t necessarily getting energy from that supplier, we always get energy from an aggregated grid. Of course, our choices control where ConEd purchases energy, but the energy we purchase ain’t what’s coming into our homes.
We will dive into energy choice in a few posts, but I was gobsmacked learning about how power gets to my house, how our grid functions (at a high level), and the roles of renewable, fossil and nuclear energy plays in New York. All this basic information is important as we unpack why (and your) ConEd bill is so insanely high.
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