Con Edison Beefs Up T&D, Renewable Capacities in $2.85 Billion Project Slate

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Consolidated Edison Incorporated (NYSE:ED) (Con Edison) (New York, New York) has been making significant progress in recent months on projects once stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as the energy supplier urged the people of New York, where it is one of the state's largest service providers, to curb power consumption amid a record-shattering heat wave, it was building out a slew of clean-energy and transmission & distribution (T&D) projects across the U.S. Industrial Info is tracking $2.85 billion worth of active projects from Con Edison, the majority of which is attributed to solar-generation and battery-storage projects.

Con Edison has been chalking up progress on one of New York's most ambitious energy projects: the NY Energy Highway, a far-reaching initiative to modernize New York's statewide energy system. In addition to the introduction of renewable-generation sources and the retirement of older, inefficient plants, the wide-ranging plan aims to ease transmission bottlenecks and bolster the Empire State's capacity to move excess power to high-demand areas. According to the Albany Times Union, New York authorities announced significant progress in June on a stretch of under-construction, high-capacity power lines that will connect renewable sources in northern and western New York with Albany and its surrounding area, as well as high-consuming areas further south.

Among its transmission projects in southern New York, Con Edison is at work on a series of power line upgrades in Orange County that are set to begin construction later this year, including:

• a six-mile stretch from Goshen to Chester; see project report
• a three-mile stretch from Middletown to Goshen; see project report
• a three-mile stretch within Goshen; see project report
• a three-mile stretch within Chester; see project report

In addition to the line improvements, Con Edison is readying for a series of substation upgrades in Orange County, each valued at $25 million, also set to kick off this summer. They include the:

• Chester Substation in Chester; see project report
• Sugarloaf Substation in Chester; see project report
• Shoemaker Substation in Middletown; see project report
• South Goshen Substation in Goshen; see project report
• Hartley Substation in Goshen; see project report

Click on the image at right for a map of Con Edison's substation upgrades across Orange County, New York.

Subsidiary Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, the second-largest solar developer in the U.S. and the seventh-largest worldwide, announced last week that its $120 million Battle Mountain Solar Plant in Valmy, Nevada, which generates 101 megawatts (MW) from 348,000 crystalline photovoltaic (PV) modules, finished construction and is operational. The facility includes a 25-MW lithium battery-energy storage system (BESS) unit, making it Nevada's largest DC-coupled combined solar battery system.

The subsidiary continues to seek permits for a 70-MW second phase of its CED Crane Solar Plant in Crane, Texas, which uses the same type of PV module; the 150-MW first phase began operations in the summer of 2020. Subscribers can learn more from Industrial Info's reports on the Battle Mountain plant and its BESS, and CED Crane projects.

Con Edison also won approval from the New York State Public Service Commission during the second quarter for what would be the largest utility-scale battery system in New York State: the East River Energy Storage System in Astoria. The 100-MW project would be built on the site of the former Charles Poletti Power Plant, a fossil-fuel facility that halted operations in January 2010. The Poletti plant once was Astoria's biggest emitter of toxins. The New York Power Authority (NYPA) would lease the property to Con Edison's partner, 174 Power Global (Irvine, California), which is a subsidiary of Hanwha Group (Seoul, South Korea), under a long-term contract. Subscribers can learn more from Industrial Info's project report.

"Battery storage is essential to our quest to create a clean energy future and prevail against climate change," said Leonard Singh, senior vice president of Customer Energy Solutions for Con Edison, in a press release. "Bulk storage will let us bring large amounts of renewable energy to our customers without compromising our industry-leading reliability, even as fossil fuel generators in New York City are shuttered into retirement."

Con Edison's net income for second-quarter 2021 was reported to be about $165 million, a 9.34% decrease from second-quarter 2020. Total revenues stood at $2.97 billion, a 9.27% increase from the same period last year.

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