Patrick Robbins

In the case of New York City, that's Con Edison.

And, you know, oftentimes the regulator will

You know, they may they may knock down, you know, what a company proposes by like a couple of, you know, percentage points in a rate case.

But they are, I would say, very much hamstrung by that asymmetry.

And so that's one answer as to how we ended up getting the high bills that we see today.

But I think that.

If we want to go into more depth on why our electric bills are so high, we can also look at two components of the grid that I mentioned before, that generation side of the grid.

And then, you know, we can talk a little bit more about distribution.

You know, I understand that on this show, you guys have talked about the war in Iran pretty extensively.

I would say that.

I mean, this will be very familiar territory for your listeners, but that war and geopolitical instability more broadly has real, real consequences for the fuel supply of our electric grid.

Here in New York, we have about 50% of our generation coming from fracked gas, methane gas.

And that means that when there's market volatility, we are extremely susceptible to that.

And, you know, I can go into a little bit more on how wholesale markets work and why the market structure and the generation market is actually kind of designed to exacerbate those fluctuations, you know, with the highest cost energy source setting the price for, you know, for the market across the board.

But that's one big, big answer to why our bills are so high.

The other side of it I'll say is the distribution side.

So when you look at the distribution side costs, that's counterintuitively considered the biggest driver of high electricity bills across the board.

And the reason for that is that the utilities get paid a return on equity for building stuff.

So when they want to raise rates, they go to the commission of their state.

They say, we want to raise money to build new substations, other kinds of infrastructure, and here's what we'll need to maintain service, build what we need to build, et cetera.