What are you being charged for?
A Westchester electric bill splits three ways. Most of it is not the electricity itself.
Delivery charges · 56%
What your provider pays to transport electricity from the source to your house, over poles, wires, substations and transformers.
Supply charges · 33%
What your provider pays to purchase the electricity itself from generating sources.
Taxes & surcharges · 11%
The remainder of the monthly bill.
Westchester runs on natural gas
The grid serving the metro New York area relies 99% on fossil fuel combustion, and 98% of that is natural gas. When gas prices move, your supply charge moves with them.
Residential rates rose 30% in four years
What a typical Con Edison household paid per kilowatt-hour.
The reliability warning behind the rates
In April 2026 the New York Independent System Operator issued its annual Summer Reliability Report. If the state sees a heatwave averaging 95°F for three or more days, the forecast capacity margin is:
−1,679 MWA negative margin means New York would not have enough electricity on those days, raising the prospect of rolling brownouts. Source: NYISO Short-Term Assessment of Reliability, 2026 Q1.
Four ways local solar lowers bills
Community solar projects benefit Westchester in ways that reach well past the subscriber.
Free grid infrastructure
When a developer applies for interconnection, the utility specifies the transformers and connection equipment the developer must buy and install, which the utility then owns. Every project strengthens the local grid at no cost to ratepayers.
Less imported power
Electricity injected locally reduces the need to import power from far-away upstate sources, which saves the utility on supply costs.
A direct subscriber discount
The utility compensates the developer for injected electricity, and the developer must pass a discount to enrolled subscribers, typically 5% to 10% savings.
Lease income for site owners
Projects pay the site owner a lease for 20 to 25 years, income the owner would not otherwise earn from that roof or ground space.
Behind-the-meter solar is prepaid electricity
Installing solar or storage on your own property for your own consumption is effectively prepaying for 25 years of electricity. Once you recover the initial investment, the remaining years are free. Even a system covering only half your annual usage has cut your exposure to ever-escalating utility rates by half.
Three ways BESS lowers bills
Storage stabilizes the Con Edison grid by shaving peak demand, deferring expensive upgrades, and making renewables usable around the clock.
Peak shaving
Systems charge overnight or midday when demand is low, then discharge in the late afternoon and evening when demand peaks. Shifting that load protects transformer substations from overloading and avoids local outages during extreme heat.
Deferring costly upgrades
Storage is a non-wires solution that removes the immediate need to build multi-million dollar substations, and relieves congestion where adding cable in dense underground conduit is physically very difficult.
Integrating clean energy
Storage harvests solar generated during the day and releases it when production drops, providing a reliable reserve that reduces reliance on older, high-polluting fossil fuel peaker plants sited in local neighborhoods.
Utilities also pay customers directly for this flexibility. Con Edison demand-response programs such as Smart Usage and Grid Rewards™ pay customers to shed load during peak events and deliver those reductions reliably across the year.
Don't we have enough solar already?
As of May 2026. The vast majority of systems are roof-mounted and serve behind the meter, reducing the owner's own bill.
Installed solar capacity must increase roughly fourfold, from 262 MW today to 1,000 MW.