Behind the Light Switch: How New York City Can Fix Its Energy Grid Locally

Busy New Yorkers shouldn’t have to think about the electric grid. They should be able to flip a switch and expect the lights to come on, the refrigerator to hum, and the air conditioner to keep running through the hottest days of summer. And at the end of each month when energy bills hit their inboxes, they shouldn’t be strapped with exorbitant rates just because it’s hot outside.

But behind those simple expectations, a lot is changing.

As more New Yorkers drive electric vehicles, install heat pumps, and electrify their homes and businesses – and as climate change causes increases in average temperatures and more frequent heatwaves – demand for electricity continues to grow, placing strain on an aging grid and upward pressure on energy bills. Much of the infrastructure serving the city is decades old, making upgrades increasingly complex and expensive. At the same time, technologies like solar panels and battery storage have become dramatically more affordable and common, even as communities debate where these facilities should be located and how they can be regulated safely.

In many ways, the City’s energy system increasingly encounters traffic jams. For example, energy demand spikes during heat waves as millions of New Yorkers cool their homes at the same time. As a result, high volumes of electricity push through aging wires, creating bottlenecks that overload the infrastructure and cause power flow to stall. If your lights flickered or your neighborhood experienced a brief outage during July’s heatwave, you saw what can happen when the system is pushed toward its limits.

To meet this surging demand and to relieve pressure on the local grid, critical large-scale transmission projects, offshore wind farms, and other significant renewable projects, funded in part by the State and federal government, are coming online bringing more clean, affordable electricity into the city. We need them, despite the current federal administration’s hostile stance, and we should continue to build them. They deliver reliable power, cleaner air, good-paying jobs, and the long-term transformation of our energy economy.

But these projects, while critical, take time and resources New York City doesn’t fully control.

So, this bears the question:

What can New York City do that is within its own control?

This Office explored this question and offered recommendations in a recent report about meeting New York City’s energy demand challenge.

City government owns thousands of buildings, parking fields, fleet depots, wastewater facilities, and other public properties that could help generate and store electricity closer to the communities that use it. It has already reviewed and deemed 200 of those sites solar- and/or battery-ready. There is approximately 400 megawatts (MW) of storage potential on unused City-owned land that could be used for battery storage projects. Instead of sending every additional electron across miles of transmission lines and through aging substations, local solar and battery systems can help serve nearby homes, businesses, and public facilities.

Imagine if the City treated its own real estate as an energy portfolio.

By pursuing a coordinated citywide strategy to develop solar and battery storage across municipal properties, rather than advancing projects one site at a time, New York City could unlock significant distributed energy capacity. The City could use a range of procurement, financing, lease and partnership structures suited to different facilities, while leveraging private capital, supporting union jobs, and putting underused public assets to work.

These recommendations send a clear signal that New York City is open for clean energy development. Clear pathways for deploying local renewables can support economic growth and technological innovation, strengthening the City’s position as a leader in the sector.

In addition to the economic development potential, a municipal clean energy portfolio would reduce strain on existing infrastructure, potentially require less frequent costly upgrades, and make the grid more resilient during periods of peak demand.

Strategic battery deployment on municipal properties can help stabilize New York City’s grid.

By adding battery-stored clean power into the grid during high-stress hours, this expanded supply would directly mitigate peak pricing and lower consumer costs.

Currently, fossil fuel “peaker plants” are used in New York City to meet high demand during heatwaves. Many are aging fossil-fuel generators that require expensive maintenance and pollute communities disproportionately burdened with environmental issues.

Alternatively, batteries can store electricity when demand is lower and discharge it almost instantly, at a lower cost, when the grid comes under stress. They won’t replace every peaker plant overnight, but they can reduce how often those plants need to run, improve local reliability, and help keep the power on during extreme weather.

Implementation at speed and scale will require urgent collaboration across the public and private sectors.

Large-scale infrastructure takes time, and with several offshore wind projects intended to power New York City facing delays or cancellations, we cannot afford to wait. That makes it all the more critical to pursue near-term, localized solutions and to make it easier for innovative clean energy technologies to come online while maintaining strong safety standards.

Every delay has a price tag. Every month a clean energy project spends waiting for permits or a grid connection amounts to delayed investment, delayed jobs and delayed energy savings for customers.

That means giving agencies like FDNY and DOB, already national leaders in safety and oversight for renewables, greater resources and systems to review applications more efficiently, while also working with Con Edison to reduce delays in connecting new projects to the grid.

New York City cannot control every federal decision, transmission project, or offshore wind timeline. But it can control how it uses its own land, buildings, procurement power, and regulatory capacity. Those assets should now become part of the infrastructure that keeps New Yorkers’ lights on and energy bills manageable.

Karen Imas is the Policy Director for Climate and Resiliency at the Office of the New York City Comptroller. She has worked in the private, public and non-profit sectors advancing clean energy projects and climate resilient infrastructure to strengthen New York City’s communities. She is the co-author of the recent Comptroller’s Office report Meeting New York City’s Energy Demand Challenge: How Local Distributed Energy Can Strengthen Energy Security, Lower Costs, and Improve Resilience.