Investor-owned utility
National Grid (Niagara Mohawk)
The largest upstate footprint: Buffalo and most of Erie County, Niagara County outside the municipals, Syracuse and Central New York, the Mohawk Valley, the Capital Region, and the North Country. If you live in Western New York and your bill is not from a village electric department, it is almost certainly National Grid.
At a glance
The numbers that decide your project
Default residential rate
SC-1
The default for essentially every single-family home in National Grid's upstate territory. If you never asked to change rates, you are on SC-1.
All-in cost of energy
$0.19–$0.26 / kWh
Delivery plus supply plus surcharges.
Filed National Grid (Niagara Mohawk) residential rates · verified Apr 2026Range spans the seasonal swing in default supply, which National Grid resets every month.
Basic service charge
$21 / month
Solar does not remove this.
Filed National Grid (Niagara Mohawk) residential rates · verified Apr 2026Basic service charge. You pay it at zero kWh, and solar does not remove it.
Customer Benefit Contribution
$0.69 / kW-DC / month
About $75 a year on a 9 kW system, for the life of the array.
Filed Customer Benefit Contribution (CBC) rates · verified Jan 2026Applies to net-metered systems interconnected on or after January 1, 2022. National Grid's is the lowest CBC of the six investor-owned utilities.
Interconnection timeline
4–12 weeks
Application to Permission to Operate, utility side only.
Observed GridReady quote and bill review sample · verified Apr 2026Application to Permission to Operate, on completed residential jobs homeowners have reported to us. Excludes time the installer spent on permitting.
VDER / NYISO zones
A (West), C (Central), D (North), E (Mohawk Valley), F (Capital)
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 | Flat | $0.19–$0.26 | $21/mo | No arbitrage value |
| SC-1 (voluntary TOU option) | Time-of-use | $0.11–$0.34 | $21/mo | Some arbitrage value |
| Charge Smart NY / EV managed charging | EV programme | $0.19–$0.26 | $21/mo | No arbitrage value |
Interconnection
What actually slows a project down here
- Residential systems under 25 kW-AC run through the standardized interconnection process. Expect the utility-side review itself to be uneventful; the delay is usually the meter swap.
- The bi-directional meter exchange is scheduled separately from the electrical inspection. Systems routinely sit finished-but-off for weeks waiting on it. Ask your installer who is responsible for chasing that appointment.
- Permission to Operate is the date that matters for your net-metering vintage, not the install date.
- Rural single-phase laterals in the Southern Tier and North Country hit hosting-capacity limits well below what an urban circuit tolerates.
Reliability
How the power fails in this territory
Upstate reliability is average for the region: a handful of short interruptions a year in built-up areas, longer and more frequent ones on rural overhead circuits. The tail risk is a winter wind or ice event that takes out a whole feeder for a day or more.
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
60 places we cover on National Grid
- Buffalo
- Syracuse
- Amherst
- Albany
- Cheektowaga
- Colonie
- Tonawanda
- Schenectady
- Utica
- Hamburg
- Troy
- Niagara Falls
- West Seneca
- Lancaster
- Clifton Park
- Rome
- Clarence
- Cicero
- North Tonawanda
- Orchard Park
- Saratoga Springs
- Watertown
- Grand Island
- Lackawanna
- Wheatfield
- Amsterdam
- Oswego
- Lewiston
- Batavia
- Evans
- Kenmore
- Gloversville
- Depew
- Glens Falls
- Olean
- Dunkirk
- Elma
- Fulton
- Oneida
- Alden
- Newfane
- Potsdam
- Eden
- Pendleton
- East Aurora
- Medina
- Albion
- Wilson
- Williamsville
- Le Roy
- Perry
- Warsaw
- Lowville
- Lakewood
- Gowanda
- Attica
- Falconer
- Franklinville
- Ellicottville
- Bemus Point
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.