NYSEG, Cen Hud, Con Ed Penalized For Service, Reliability Problems

ALBANY, NY — The New York State Public Service Commission announced Thursday that it is penalizing Central Hudson, Con Edison, NYSEG and three other major utility companies in the state for failing to meet customer service and reliability targets.

The PSC reviewed the state’s major utilities in terms of their performance in a number of key areas in 2022, including electric reliability service, electric safety, gas safety, and customer service, officials said. As a result of the review, utility revenues collected from customers will be reduced by a total of $22.5 million for the six utilities.

The total negative revenue adjustments for failing customer service requirements in 2022 is a record and also nearly 10 times higher than the $2.3 million in financial penalties assessed in 2021.

The financial penalties will be applied in the next rate case of each of the respective utilities, including NYSEG's pending rate case.

Meanwhile, the investigations regarding past and current billing issues at Central Hudson, NYSEG and RG&E remain ongoing. The reports will be considered and could inform the ongoing investigations.

"The Commission’s rate design provides carrots and sticks based on utility performance," said Commission Chair Rory M. Christian. "In 2022, almost a quarter of those utilities fell short of their legal requirements in certain areas. The Commission will aggressively work to ensure lagging utilities improve performance. Maintaining reliability and ensuring good customer service is required for utilities, and the Commission holds them accountable when they fail to meet our standards."

Electric Reliability

In its annual review, Department of Public Service staff rely on two primary metrics to measure electric reliability: the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI or frequency) and the Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI or duration).

Excluding major storms, the statewide interruption frequency for 2022 is better than last year and the statewide five-year average. The statewide interruption duration, excluding major storms, was 1.9 hours. This is 5.4 minutes shorter than last year and 4.8 minutes shorter than the five-year average. The state experienced 34 major storms in 2022.

Although that was four less major storms than experienced in 2021, the impact was much more severe, PSC staff said. Customers affected by major storms increased 31 percent when compared to 2021, and customer hours of interruption from major storms doubled when compared to 2021. Most of these additional hours can be attributed to three separate winter storms in February, April, and December of 2022.

Reliability Performance Mechanisms are company-wide performance targets established by the Commission in rate orders; companies are subjected to negative revenue adjustments (financial penalties) for failing to meet their reliability targets. NYSEG failed to meet its reliability target for outage frequency in 2022. As a result, NYSEG incurred a negative revenue adjustment of $7 million. All other electric utilities met their reliability targets in 2022.

Customer Service

Most of the State’s utilities have met or exceeded the standards of performance on measures for customer service established within their respective rate case proceedings, PSC officials said, except:

• Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation failed to meet all three of its metric targets, resulting in a negative adjustment of $2.87 million.
• NYSEG and RG&E each failed to meet all four of their respective metric targets, resulting in negative adjustments of $8.72 million and $5.9 million, respectively.
• Consolidated Edison Company of New York failed to meet its call answer rate metric, resulting in a negative revenue adjustment of $4 million.
• Liberty Utilities d/b/a St. Lawrence Gas and National Grid (upstate) each failed to meet their metric for the customer satisfaction survey resulting in a negative revenue adjustment of $36,000 and $1.05 million, respectively.

The reports may be obtained by going to the Commission Documents section of the Commission’s Web site at www.dps.ny.gov and entering the following Case Numbers in the input box labeled "Search by Case Number": Electric Reliability Performance (23-E-0119); Electric Safety (23-E-0110); Gas Safety (23-G-0224); and Customer Service (23-M-0040). Commission documents may also be obtained from the Commission’s Files Office, 14th floor, Three Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY 12223 (518-474-2500). If you have difficulty understanding English, please call 1-800-342-3377 for free language assistance services regarding this press release.