In addition to Wednesday’s budget speech that ran over an hour, Governor Cuomo released 550 pages of proposals that go into much more detail. Among those details: changes to the state’s power grid.
The changes to utility regulation are meant to make it easier for local, small-scale producers to get their power to customers. In Cuomo’s budget is a 10-year $5 billion investment in a Clean Energy Fund.
There’s money to start a battery research facility and a smart grid laboratory. The governor is also proposing changes to the New York Independent System Operator. The NYISO acts as a broker for the state’s electricity market – matching utilities and their customers with power plants and the transmission lines that deliver the power.
Kit Kennedy of the Natural Resources Defense Council says changing the way that marketplace works is necessary if the power sources are going to change.
“So it’s a movement away from a system that’s dominated by big fossil fuel power sources to a system that’s more distributed, where customers have more options and it’s easier for them to use clean energy,” says Kennedy.
That process began last year, with the launch of REV, or Reforming the Energy Vision. The Public Service Commission has been working on an overhaul of utility regulations and energy distribution since then. Cuomo’s budget now goes to the legislature. The final version is due at the end of March.
