Investor-owned utility
Consolidated Edison
New York City (all five boroughs) and Westchester County. The highest electricity prices and the most complex interconnection environment in the state.
At a glance
The numbers that decide your project
Default residential rate
SC-1 Rate I (EL1)
The default for Con Edison residential customers in NYC and Westchester.
All-in cost of energy
$0.31–$0.40 / kWh
Delivery plus supply plus surcharges.
Filed Con Edison residential electric rates · verified Apr 2026The highest residential all-in cost in the state by a wide margin, and the reason downstate solar pencils on a much shorter horizon than upstate.
Basic service charge
$22 / month
Solar does not remove this.
Filed Con Edison residential electric rates · verified Apr 2026Basic service charge. Con Edison also layers a per-kWh delivery charge on top.
Customer Benefit Contribution
$1.09 / kW-DC / month
About $118 a year on a 9 kW system, for the life of the array.
Filed Customer Benefit Contribution (CBC) rates · verified Jan 2026
Interconnection timeline
10–30 weeks
Application to Permission to Operate, utility side only.
Observed GridReady quote and bill review sample · verified Apr 2026Wide band because network-area addresses behave completely differently from radial-fed ones.
VDER / NYISO zones
I (Dunwoodie / Westchester), J (New York City)
Where the Value Stack applies instead of net metering.
Rates
Residential rate options
| Rate | Type | All-in | Fixed | What it does to storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SC-1 Rate I (EL1) | Flat | $0.31–$0.40 | $22/mo | No arbitrage value |
| SC-1 Rate II (EL9) | Time-of-use | $0.14–$0.48 | $22/mo | Some arbitrage value |
Interconnection
What actually slows a project down here
- Secondary network distribution — common in Manhattan and dense parts of Brooklyn and Queens — is designed to push power one direction only. Exporting solar onto a network can require a network protector study, an export-limiting device, or in some cases is simply not permitted.
- Radial-fed areas, which covers most of Staten Island, the Bronx, outer Queens, and Westchester, behave much more like the rest of the state.
- Con Edison's review is the slowest in New York. Six months from application to Permission to Operate is not unusual.
- NYC also layers its own DOB filing and FDNY rooftop-access requirements on top of the utility process. Setback rules eat usable roof area.
Reliability
How the power fails in this territory
Underground network areas are extremely reliable day to day, with rare but large failures. Overhead areas in Westchester and outer Queens see ordinary tree-and-wind outages.
This is the honest input to a backup-power decision. Buy against the failure mode you actually face, not against the one in the brochure.
Coverage
4 places we cover on Con Edison
Official sources
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How this page is built
This is a generated page: the structure is shared across locations, the numbers are not. Every figure comes from the source cited beside it, with the date we last checked it. Nothing here is a quote, an appraisal, or tax advice, and none of it is specific to your roof.
Rates and incentive programs change. We re-verify utility tariffs and NYSERDA program status on a rolling schedule and stamp the date on each number rather than on the page, so you can see which specific figures are fresh. Full methodology · Program status tracker · About the Local Energy Playbook
Page content last reviewed April 2026.