A History of Con Edison’s Electricity Rates
It is no secret that the cost of electricity has been going up recently and is set to increase further in the future. All throughout the country, utility companies are making constant changes to their business strategies in an effort to increase profitability.
For electricity consumption, increasing electricity rates will lead to higher costs to the consumer, but there are a few ways to offset them.
One way to do this is by installing a solar panel system at your home. As electricity becomes more expensive, the cost for solar is decreasing drastically and has become viable for the average homeowner. With higher electricity rates, a solar panel system will significantly reduce your monthly bill.
Con Edison New York is no different in regards to their electricity rates. Since 2014, when they started servicing regions in New York, their electricity rates have been all over the place, so let’s check out some of the details.
Con Edison’s Electricity Rates
To gain an understanding of the history of Con Edison’s electricity rates, we will look at the historical average monthly electric bill for a few different categories of electricity consumers. This will include:
- NYC Residential (300 kWh / month)
- NYC Small Commercial (583 kWh / month)
- Westchester Residential (450 kWh / month)
- Westchester Small Commercial (583 kWh / month)
For each one of these average monthly bills, the average quantity of electricity consumed is also listed. Further, the electric bills are split into different charges, such as the delivery, commodity, MAC (Monthly Adjustment Clause), RDM (Revenue Decoupling Mechanism), and surcharges.
NYC Residential
From the above image, we can see that the electricity rate for NYC residential customers started out at its highest level in 2014, decreased pretty significantly, and then just recently started increasing.
As you will see throughout the rest of this post, this pattern is pretty similar for each type of electricity consumer.
NYC Small Commercial
As expected, the total cost for electricity is much higher for NYC small commercial customers, but what is interesting is that the cost went down in 2017, as well. The decrease from 2016 to 2017 was much smaller than 2014 to 2015, however.
We can also see that the rate for each kWh of electricity was higher for commercial customers than residential.
Something interesting in regards to just the small commercial customers is that the RDM charge is actually negative, which means the customer is getting paid by Con Edison in those cases.
Westchester Residential
In Westchester, residential customers have also seen a similar pattern of decrease and then increase in price, but the increase from 2016 to 2017 is much more drastic than the residential rate in NYC.
In Westchester we saw an increase of 3.8% in this time period, while in NYC the cost went up just 1%. It is important to note that the total number of kWh for this monthly average bill is higher than the amount in the NYC monthly bill.
Westchester Small Commercial
One thing to acknowledge in the average monthly electric bill for Westchester small commercial customers is that the cost per kWh is noticeably cheaper than in NYC.
This difference becomes less obvious as we move forward in the years. Additionally, the cost for electricity went up from 2016 to 2017 for Westchester small commercial customers, whereas it went down for NYC small commercial customers.
Overall Patterns
A main theme that we can observe in these electric bills is that the cost in fact went down for a few years before starting to settle down or go up. There could be several reasons why the cost for electricity for Con Edison’s customers was higher in its early years, but the current increases we are seeing are expected based on the national trend.
Another detail about the history of Con Edison’s electricity rates is that the cost for the delivery of the electricity has gone up or stayed the same each year for all customers.This will continue to increase, which is why having a solar panel system and home battery can help eliminate most of these costs.
If you are looking to prepare for the upcoming increases, check out solar providers near you to get started!
