New York City’s electrical grid was pushed to the brink during last week’s heatwave as isolated power outages affected thousands of residents, highlighting what experts said is the new normal during hot summer days.
Roughly 3% of Con Edison customers, or around 110,000 people, lost power for an average of about four hours in pockets across the five boroughs during the heatwave from Sunday, June 22 through Wednesday, June 25, according to the utility. The outages, experts said, demonstrate the growing strain on the grid as buildings use more electrical power while the state retires more fossil fuel-burning energy sources without a replacement power source in place.
The shortfall creates added stress on infrastructure, like transmission lines, in dire need of upgrades…
The grid operator is counting on the Champlain Hudson Power Express to bring clean energy to New York City from Canada starting May 2026 to offset some of the next decade’s projected energy deficits. Hochul’s recent proposal to add 1 gigawatt through a new nuclear power plant — enough to power 1 million homes — could help fill the gap. But there’s no timeline for that project.
“One nuclear power plant is not a transformational amount of power, but it’s enough to help a little bit,” Clinton Andrews, director of Rutgers’ Center for Urban Policy Research, said…
Many transmission wires need an upgrade to move more power to homes and regions.
“Many of those [transmission lines] are maxed out, especially due to electric vehicles and also due to the increased presence of air conditioning and heat pumps,” Andrews said. “Many of them are a century old and not only outdated, but woefully under capacity.”