In Episode 40 of the Power Trends podcast, NYISO Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Emilie Nelson offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the grid was managed during June’s heatwave, which brought record-setting temperatures across the Northeast. Nelson walks through the critical decisions and emergency measures that helped ensure adequate supply margins across New York. According to Nelson, forecasting, demand response, and a mix of energy resources—including solar and...

The electric system is undergoing rapid and instrumental change on a scale not experienced since 1892 when Thomas Edison first electrified the Pearl Street station in lower Manhattan. In the NYISO’s latest podcast, President & CEO Rich Dewey, and Executive Vice President & COO Emilie Nelson discuss how these changes are impacting grid reliability, supply resources and planning the electric system for the future. Diving into the NYISO’s recently released Power Trends report with Kevin ...

Collaboration between the industry and government will be paramount to maintain robust wholesale markets and ensure grid reliability as the state continues to promote rapid development of renewable resources in the coming year.That was the message from NYISO President and CEO Rich Dewey on the latest Power Trends podcast. In episode 38, Dewey reflected on his annual “State of the Grid” message to market participants and policymakers at the company’s Management Committee, highlighting several ...

As temperatures drop, New Yorkers turn up their thermostats and demand for electricity rises. In anticipation of the cold season, the NYISO Operations team develops a winter preparedness report that evaluates the ability of the grid to meet demand on the coldest days of the year. The NYISO’s 2024-25 Winter Assessment considers load forecast, the capacity of generators, the transmission system, and the availability of fuels that power fossil-fuel generators across the state. This year’s Wi...

How will the demand for electricity, a changing generation mix, and the transmission system evolve over the next 10 years? This is the question that our Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) examines in order to assess and identify impacts to reliability. In the latest Power Trends podcast, Senior VP of System & Resource Planning Zach Smith dives deep into the 2024 RNA to explain how the NYISO analyzes demand forecasts, seasonal variations, and the impact of electrification on heating and tr...

As the diversity and scale of energy resources have evolved in recent years, NYISO’s market design team has been working hard to create and implement market innovations to support those technologies. The most recent example of NYISO's commitment to innovation is the launch of a first-in-the nation program to integrate aggregations of distributed energy resources (DER) into the wholesale electric markets. This ground-breaking program allows small-scale resources including solar, wind, battery...

Our mission at the NYISO is to ensure power system reliability and competitive markets for New York in a clean-energy future, and to work with all stakeholders to build the cleanest, most reliable electric system in the nation. In keeping with our mission, we operate a capacity market to meet resource adequacy requirements and serve consumer demand. The capacity market acts as a transparent and cost-effective mechanism to avoid the danger of service interruptions and outages. As older r...

When we talk about building a more sustainable future, the journey is as important as the destination. Steering the electric grid through these monumental changes requires leadership and creativity. As the NYISO’s Director of Grid Transition, Udayan Nair oversees the integration of new elements of the industry into our operations and planning functions and works to facilitate coordination across teams. “A change of this magnitude is going to impact all parts of the organization,” Nair s...

What does the path to a decarbonized grid by 2040 look like? Dr. C. Lindsay Anderson of Cornell University is working to answer the question of where best on the grid to incorporate large amounts of new generation on the future grid to achieve optimal performance. Anderson is chair of Cornell’s Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on creating detailed models of energy systems to see how they’ll perform under different conditions. Her other resea...

Columbia University’s Daniel Zarrilli knows a thing or two about New York City and the effects of climate change. For almost a decade prior to Hurricane Sandy, he worked on the city’s waterfront, managing maintenance and construction of the city’s piers and bulkheads, overseeing cruise terminals and other maritime assets, and working with coastal communities on a variety of local projects. That experience along the city’s 520-mile shoreline, plus his training as an engineer, put him in view o...

You might say Nicole Bouchez’s role as the NYISO’s Consumer Interest Liaison and Senior Principal Economist combines deep data analytics with good, old-fashioned customer service. She has an especially important responsibility evaluating the impacts of major market design changes for stakeholders, policymakers, and market participants. That’s where her PhD in International Economics comes in handy. But a large part of her job also includes working directly with some of the lar...

In this episode of our Power Trends podcast, Julie Tighe discusses her role leading the New York League of Conservation Voters, and her recent addition to the NYISO’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC). The EAC, which was formed in 2005, provides information and analysis on state and federal environmental policies relative to NYISO’s mission of grid reliability. “No one is going to be happy if the air conditioning goes out in a heat wave. So, we need to be strategic about that,” she said. ...

New York’s recent peak day for electricity consumption came during a heatwave, as millions of people relied on their air conditioners to keep cool. That’s not unusual. However, some of the circumstances leading up to that day still provided a challenge. On our latest Power Trends podcast, NYISO’s Vice President of Operations Aaron Markham discusses what goes into maintaining a reliable grid during a late-season heatwave. The peak load on Sept. 6 was just over 30,200 megawatts. New York’...

In our latest podcast, we sat down with Rana Mukerji, NYISO’s SVP of Market Structures, to learn about his journey from growing up in Calcutta, India to becoming widely regarded as one of the ­­industry's leading designers of electricity markets. We ask Rana about his past career experience working for General Electric and ABB, and how the markets must evolve to accommodate a new set of renewable resources while keeping the grid reliable. Wholesale competitive electricity markets are an essen...

Episode 26 of the Power Trends podcast delivers a change of pace for our listeners. In this episode, NYISO market mitigation economist Michelle Merlis discusses her long and challenging path to becoming a world-class trail runner. While Michelle's early years found her on the basketball court, she discovered her passion for competitive running while earning a master’s degree in agricultural economics at Purdue University. After graduating from Purdue in 2012, she moved to the Capital R...

“The objective is the reliability of the grid,” VP of System & Resource Planning Zach Smith says about the process his group oversees studying the impacts of connecting new electric resources to the grid. Because of state policies and technological advancements, more developers are seeking to connect to the grid, creating more demands on the New York ISO in overseeing the study process. Smith is a frequent guest of the Power Trends podcast. His conversations on grid planning, reliability,...

In our latest Power Trends Podcast, we interview two leading Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts about the impact of wholesale natural gas prices on winter electricity costs in New York. We spoke to Dr. Tyler Hodge, Senior Economist in the Office of Energy Analysis, and Corrina Ricker, a Certified Data Scientist on the Natural Gas Markets team, to dive into the findings of EIA’s latest Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO). Hodge said that he expects electricity prices in New York in ...

Every five minutes, 24 hours a day, electricity in New York State is bought and sold through competitive wholesale electric markets administered by the NYISO. And while we may not think about electricity the same way we do about other products and services, competitive wholesale electric markets are truly dynamic, with hundreds of buyers and sellers, or “market participants,” involved in the process of meeting consumer demand for power at the least cost available. But how do we make sure th...

The NYISO recently released a new report that identifies the unprecedented level of electrical system investment necessary to achieve New York State’s climate policy requirements. Developed in collaboration with stakeholders and state agencies, the 2021-2040 System and Resource Outlook (the Outlook) uses various scenarios to identify potential pathways for transmission and supply investments that will support a reliable transition of the electric grid. In our latest Power Trends podcast...

In our latest Power Trends Podcast, we interviewed two leading U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts about domestic and international price trends and how world energy supply and demand are impacting wholesale electricity prices in New York. We spoke to Dr. Tyler Hodge, Senior Economist in the Office of Energy Analysis, and Corrina Ricker, a Certified Data Scientist on the Natural Gas Markets team, to dive into the findings of EIA’s latest Short Term Energy Outlook (STE...