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The State Public Service Commission is fining Con Ed $18 million for failing to meet reliability standards during the nine-day Queens blackout last year. PSC Chairwoman Patricia Acampora said, "Hopefully, this order today will send a message to Con Ed that they must be diligent in their efforts to maintain a reliable network, or they will face financial consequences."
As far as we're concerned, it seems like Con Ed got off easy. Especially when they are bragging about their third quarter financial performance. And it's not like the money is going back to customers - it's going towards other Con Ed expenses.
The PSC called the money a "revenue adjustment" and faced criticism for not classifying it as a :"major outage." (That, in spite of its report damning Con Ed.) Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris said, "If the Long Island City outage wasn’t major, then I shudder to think what would be considered major."
Earlier this year, the city didn't really criticize Con Ed for its actions during the blackout.
Photograph of a sign from a Queens business affected by huckfunn on Flickr
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SLAP ON THE WRIST! THe fine should have been a measurable percent of their profits for the period of the blackout. It should have been something their shareholders would have felt. In MY perfect world, there would be suits on Rikers' trading commissary for protection.
I agree with westernqueensland.
And Jen's "As far we're concerned..." comment is right. Bravo to Gothamist for taking this editorial position.
Con Ed (and the MTA, by the way) get away with way too much. Its not a question of the balance sheet with taxes etc. Its a question of whether you are doing the job well or NOT.
PS: I hate that "On It" ad campaign that Con Ed plasters on the subways. Its almost as bad as BP pretending to be the cutting edge of alternative energy.
con ed should pay residents with outages one month's electric bill for every day we were inconvenienced.
"it's going towards other Con Ed expenses." So con ed had to pay itself a fine? that seems rather well-arranged.
I live in Astoria, but I have to say that a lot of the treatment that Con Ed receives in blackout situations is unfair (not all, but I would even say most).
Though the Astoria one was extreme, MOST places outside of NYC deal with power outages even during regular rain....they expect it, and it's understood. We only have occasional problems during severe weather (extreme heat + thunderstorms), and I think we're better off than most.
We also do much better than other areas of our country when considering the amount of strain on the system. We have well over 8 million people in this city, and the power grid supports that.
Also keep in mind that the fact that NYC has seasons with very opposite weather, going form cold to hot in months, which creates further strain and damage to the infrastructure no matter what you do. In addition, you're talking about a power grid that was built mostly underground in a city that was almost already completely built on top of....not easy to maintain season to season.
And you know when people tell you to not waste electricity? That's not jsut to fight global warming or lower your bills....it affects the strain yet again. We all know how many of us leave our computer, cable box (evnet hoguht he TV if off), and A/C on while we're at work during thos scorching days. When hundreds of thousands of people are doing that, or even millions, it adds up fast.
The city does need to step up in regards to rebuilding our underground power grid that's been aging for the past century. All of that responsibility cannot just be laid on Consolidated Edison.
Unfortunately people will always complain when things don't go well, but never step back to realize how good they have it when things are going well.