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
