What is a non-wires alternative?

It is a plan to meet rising electricity demand without building new poles, wires, or substations. The utility instead pays for efficiency, local generation like solar and batteries, and demand response so that less power needs to flow through the existing network at its busiest hour.

Did BQDM mean Con Ed never built the substation?

Not exactly. The program deferred the conventional substation rather than ruling it out forever. Deferral still saves ratepayers money by pushing a large capital cost years into the future, or avoiding it if demand patterns keep changing.

Who paid the roughly $200 million?

Con Ed recovers approved program costs through electric rates, so ratepayers across its service area funded it. That is the same pool that would have paid for a new substation, which is why regulators compared the two paths on cost.

Can I still get paid to reduce demand?

Often yes. Con Ed runs demand response and efficiency programs that pay customers and buildings to cut usage on peak days or install qualifying equipment. Enrollment windows and rules change, so check the current program pages before you count on a payment.

Lead story

Grid · Analysis

The Substation Con Ed Paid Customers Not to Need

In 2014, Con Edison won approval to spend roughly $200 million on efficiency, solar, batteries, and demand response instead of a new substation in Brooklyn and Queens. A decade on, here is what the utility bought, whether it held the peak down, and what it learned about paying for demand it does not have to serve.

Filed: October 23, 2026
Section: Grid
Read time: 6 minutes

I · What Con Ed bought instead of a substation

The program ran on two tracks. On the utility side, Con Ed installed its own equipment, including battery storage and distribution upgrades, to shave the local peak. On the customer side, it paid for energy efficiency, rooftop and community solar, smarter building controls, and demand response, the arrangement where a customer agrees to cut usage on command during the few hours a year the network is most stressed. Each measure had one job: push enough load off the summer peak that the old substation plan could wait.

Load relief was the point, and the target was modest in grid terms, on the order of 52 megawatts across the area by about 2018, per the utility's filings. That sounds small next to a whole borough, but a local network fails at its own peak, not the city's, so a few dozen megawatts shaved from the right feeders at the right hour can stand in for a large piece of steel.

II · The honest math

Here is the comparison that made the case. A conventional substation and the feeders to support it would have cost on the order of $1 billion by Con Ed's early estimates, while the BQDM program was budgeted at roughly $200 million. Those are not strictly the same purchase, since the demand program defers the substation rather than cancelling it forever, but the deferral bought years, and years of avoided capital carry real weight on a bill.

Who paid? Con Ed recovers program costs through rates, so in the end ratepayers across its service area funded BQDM, the same way they would have funded the substation. The bet regulators approved was that the smaller, faster, distributed spend would come out cheaper for those ratepayers over time than the large one. At last public report, that bet looked reasonable, though the accounting is genuinely hard to pin to a single clean number.

III · Whether it held the peak down

Con Ed filed regular progress reports with the Public Service Commission, and the broad picture is that the program met most of its load-relief targets and deferred the substation as planned. The utility-side measures came online faster and more predictably than the customer-side ones, which is the usual pattern: it is easier to install a battery you own than to persuade thousands of landlords and tenants to change equipment and habits.

Be careful with any claim that the program alone held the peak down. Summer load depends heavily on weather, and a cool July can flatter any efficiency effort while a brutal heat wave can swamp it. The honest reading is that BQDM worked well enough to justify the deferral, not that every megawatt can be cleanly credited to it.

IV · What it taught Con Ed and the city

Beyond the dollars, the larger payoff was institutional. BQDM gave Con Ed a working template for treating demand as something it can buy, and non-wires alternatives are now a routine question in the utility's distribution planning rather than an experiment. State regulators, through the Reforming the Energy Vision proceeding of the same era, pushed utilities statewide in that direction.

Limits matter too. A demand program defers investment, it does not always erase it, and coordinating thousands of small resources is harder and slower than pouring one foundation. For a reader, the lesson is practical: some of the cheapest grid capacity in the city is the power nobody uses at 5 p.m. on the hottest day, and the utility will increasingly pay to find it.

V · Worth watching this month

1. Con Ed's distribution and system data filings at the Public Service Commission, where any new non-wires alternative projects and their targets are posted, are routine but worth a periodic check.

2. NYISO's summer capability and peak-load forecasts, published ahead of each cooling season, which signal how hard the city's networks will be pushed.

3. Con Ed demand response enrollment windows, which typically open in spring, if you or your building want to be paid to cut load on peak days.

4. Any PSC order in a current non-wires proceeding, which actually matters because it sets how much utilities may spend on demand instead of wires.

5. NYSERDA program updates for community solar and storage, routine but relevant to anyone weighing a project on a Brooklyn or Queens rooftop.

Questions

What is a non-wires alternative?

It is a plan to meet rising electricity demand without building new poles, wires, or substations. The utility instead pays for efficiency, local generation like solar and batteries, and demand response so that less power needs to flow through the existing network at its busiest hour.
Did BQDM mean Con Ed never built the substation?

Not exactly. The program deferred the conventional substation rather than ruling it out forever. Deferral still saves ratepayers money by pushing a large capital cost years into the future, or avoiding it if demand patterns keep changing.
Who paid the roughly $200 million?

Con Ed recovers approved program costs through electric rates, so ratepayers across its service area funded it. That is the same pool that would have paid for a new substation, which is why regulators compared the two paths on cost.
Can I still get paid to reduce demand?

Often yes. Con Ed runs demand response and efficiency programs that pay customers and buildings to cut usage on peak days or install qualifying equipment. Enrollment windows and rules change, so check the current program pages before you count on a payment.

Sources

New York Department of Public Service, case documents, Government regulator; search the BQDM case (Case 14-E-0302) for Con Ed's filings, orders, and progress reports. · www.dps.ny.gov
Con Edison, Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management, The utility's own program page describing what BQDM bought and why. · www.coned.com/en/our-energy-future/our-energy-projects/brooklyn-queens-demand-management
New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), Grid operator for the state; publishes peak-load and summer capability forecasts that show how stressed the city's networks get. · www.nyiso.com
NYSERDA, State energy authority; details on community solar, storage, and efficiency programs a city building might use. · www.nyserda.ny.gov
Con Edison demand response and incentives, Utility page listing current programs that pay customers to reduce or shift electricity use. · www.coned.com/en/save-money/rebates-incentives-tax-credits