NY A11115

Electric corporations subject to Public Service Law section 25-a must submit a 10-year storm hardening and system resiliency plan to the Public Service Commission for review and approval.

Commission must review plans based on criteria including reduction of restoration costs and outage times, feasibility of hardening measures, estimated costs and benefits, implementation timeline, performance benchmarks, rate impacts, and multi-pronged strategies such as vegetation management, undergrounding lines, and automation.

Commission has 11 months to approve, modify, or deny submitted plans; corporations must file updated plans every three years using the same approval criteria.

Corporations may recover prudently incurred storm hardening plan costs through a separate rate mechanism (storm hardening plan cost recovery clause) with protection from disallowance unless fraud, perjury, or intentional withholding of information is proven.

Corporations must file approved plans with county executives and officials in their service territory; Commission must submit annual reports to Governor and Legislature on implementation status, actual costs, and rate impacts beginning December 1st after the first full year of plan implementation.