New Rules in Place Regarding Prioritization of Emergency Services and Safety Measures Regarding Downed Wires
ALBANY — The New York State Public Service Commission (Commission) today approved electric emergency response plans for the State’s major electric utilities. As part of this year’s review, major utilities amended their plans to reflect recent legislative changes, including prioritization of emergency services and enhanced safety measures regarding downed wires.
“Throughout 2023, as part of utility performance reviews following significant storms and other events impacting the utilities’ infrastructure and/or customers, the utilities’ preparedness and response actions were compared with procedures within the emergency response plans,” said Commission Chair Rory M. Christian. “The amended emergency response plans we are approving today are the result of multiple review cycles and reflect compliance with, and elaboration on, the 2023-24 legislative changes and best practices identified via joint utility collaboration and previous Commission directives.”
Annually, each investor-owned electric utility in New York — Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation, New York State Electric & Gas Corporation, National Grid, Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation, Orange & Rockland Utilities, Inc., along with PSEG LI — is required to review, update, and file a detailed emergency response plan (ERP), documenting the essential processes and procedures needed to prepare and respond to a wide array of outage events.
With its action today, the Commission directed each electric utility to file its approved plan with the county executive, or the chief elected official of a county, for each county within its service territory, or the emergency management office of the City of New York.
This year’s annual review reflects the following updates to the ERPs:
- Restoration Time: State law was amended to add new requirements regarding prioritization of emergency services and downed wires. Specifically, the new law provides that during a widespread prolonged outage affecting at least 20,000 customers in the service territory of an electric corporation, the electric corporation shall notify the village, town, or city if it is unable to restore electricity within 24 hours to a police department, fire department, ambulance service, or advanced life support first response service located in that municipality if those entities are pre-wired with an appropriate transfer switch for using an alternate generated power source. The law was also amended to reinforce the prioritization of securing downed wires over routine maintenance or other work unrelated to a response to an emergency event within the utility service territory. This update also requires the utilities’ plans to include procedures to identify, locate, and assess the reported wire no later than 72 hours after the response to an emergency event ends.
- Roadway Clearing: In response to the unprecedented conditions created by the winter storm on December 2022, National Grid, New York State Police and the New York State Department of Transportation created a road clearing taskforce to prioritize pathways for response efforts. This taskforce was critical in providing response personnel immediate access to areas of need within Erie County and the city of Buffalo. Staff worked with the utilities to memorialize this best practice in each of their plans. The ERPs now expand upon their established communications methods, such as communicating with municipal, county, and state officials and relaying the requests and needs of those officials for outage updates, repair, restoration progress, and general information sharing. These actions will serve to ensure proactive inclusion of the needs and priorities of the utility during roadway access and clearing conversations.
- Life-Support Equipment (LSE) Procedures: Utilities are required by the Commission to contact customers whose LSEs that are impacted by an outage event. Utilities must contact 80 percent of LSE customers within 12 hours of the start of the event and 100 percent of all impacted LSE customers within 24 hours of the start of the event. To standardize timeline concerns, the ERPs have been clarified to explicitly state that the initial 12-hour contact period is from the start of event or, in other words, when the widespread prolonged outage initially occurred.
- Requesting National Guard Assistance: New York Military Law outlines the process by which the Governor has the authority to order the National Guard into active service in the event of a disaster or the threat of a disaster. In anticipation of modifying this year’s ERPs, staff and representatives of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services worked to clarify this process. The utility ERPs have been revised to ensure the correct process is followed to request assistance from New York State, including the New York National Guard. For all requests, utilities shall follow their already existing processes for emergency requests by contacting their affiliated municipal, county, and State officials.
Today’s decision may be obtained by going to the Commission Documents section of the Commission’s Web site at www.dps.ny.gov and entering Case Number 23-E-0693 in the input box labeled "Search for Case/Matter Number". Many libraries offer free Internet access. Commission documents may also be obtained from the Commission’s Files Office, 14th floor, Three Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY 12223 (518-474-2500). If you have difficulty understanding English, please call us at 1-800-342-3377 for free language assistance services regarding this press release.
