New York
New York delivery charges, read from the filed tariffs
Your utility bills to deliver electricity to your building, and that half is set by the New York Public Service Commission — you can buy supply from an ESCO, but not delivery. New York prices it differently from most states: the rate changes with the season, and again with the voltage you are served at.
Three things New York does that other states do not
We have read tariffs in Ohio, Texas and New York, and New York is the outlier on all three counts. It matters because advice written for one state does not transfer.
| What | In New York | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| Season | June to September costs 28% more per kW | Ohio and Texas do not split by month |
| Service voltage | Low tension and high tension priced separately | Texas does not distinguish at this class |
| Reactive power | Its own line, $2.56 per kVar | CenterPoint hides it inside a kVA quantity |
And the magnitudes are not comparable either. Con Edison charges $44.05 per kW in summer where Oncor’s distribution charge tops out near $9.83. A 100 kW account pays about $45,220 a year in demand charges alone.
The threshold works backwards here
In Texas, crossing 10 kW raises a bill: the fixed charge multiplies and the billing basis changes against you. At Con Edison the same crossing can lower one. SC 2 prices every kilowatt-hour at $0.2038 in summer; SC 9 prices it at $0.0154 and puts the weight on demand instead.
So a business with steady consumption and a modest peak is often better off above the line, and a spiky one is better off below it. Which side you are on is a fact about your load shape, not your size — and nothing on the bill prompts you to check.
National Grid works differently again
Upstate New York is National Grid territory, and its tariff shares almost nothing with Con Edison’s beyond the regulator. Two differences decide a commercial bill there.
Class is set by consumption, not just by peak. A Small General account that uses more than 2,000 kWh in each of 4 consecutive months moves onto demand pricing — the basic charge goes from $25.00 to $65.00 and delivery is billed per kW instead of per kWh. A steady, low-power operation can cross without its peak ever rising.
Delivery is priced across four voltage bands. Large General pays $15.62 per kW at secondary voltage and $4.36 at transmission. On a 150 kW account that is about $3,213 a month against $2,254.
One quirk worth knowing: the first 40 kW are billed as a flat $624.80 rather than per kW. That works out to exactly the same $15.62 per kW, so it is a minimum quantity rather than a penalty — but it means an account at 10 kW and one at 40 kW pay the same delivery charge.
Coverage
Two of four read so far. We would rather name what we have not read than imply coverage we do not have.
- Con Edison — PSC No. 10 read for SC 2 and SC 9 Rate I, effective February 1, 2026.
- National Grid — SC-2 and SC-3 read from the published Upstate NY schedule, PSC No. 22.
- NYSEG — Tariff not yet extracted.
- Central Hudson — Tariff not yet extracted.
Pages
- Con Edison delivery charges
SC 2 and SC 9 read from PSC No. 10 — the seasonal rates, the threshold that can lower a bill rather than raise it, and the reactive power charge most accounts never notice.
- Billing terms, defined
kVar, RkVA, load factor, demand ratchet — the words on a New York commercial bill, each defined with a real filed rate.
- What a delivery charge is
The national explainer. What each line on the delivery half pays for, and why no supplier can change it.
Sources: Con Edison PSC No. 10 — Schedule for Electricity Service, SC 2 and SC 9; National Grid Upstate NY published electric service rates, PSC No. 22 (SC-2 and SC-3).
Send us a New York bill and we’ll read it against the tariff