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It was a report in the Albany Times Union and they set over the weekend. National Grid and other utilities are spending billions of dollars to prep New York's electric grid for a generational shift. And it includes things like all those AI data centers that are being built in the state and across the country.
Really yeah.
The paper went on to note that New York utilities are spending that much money to modernize the grid for those facility facilities, their investments for New Yorkers, many of them are already struggling with utility costs, are gonna have to pay for that in the coming years.
But the idea is that we're prepping it for the future.
Exactly exactly, But so how uncomfortable as the buildout happens and the stress on the grid continues.
Let's see what our next guest has to say. We've been looking forward to this.
Sally Librera is President National Grid New York. It's a subsidiary that publicly held electricity, net gas and clean energy utility National Grid PLC, serving millions in New York and mass to choose its National Grid ADRs trade in the US, they've got about a seventy five billion dollar market cap. They're up more than twenty seven percent year to date. So nice to have you here.
How are you great to be here?
Thanks Carol and Tim for having me.
Well, it's great to have you here.
How would you describe power demand today and how that demand is growing surging? Use whatever word makes sense so that we understand what's the current situation.
Sure so, at National Good in New York, we serve more than four million customers and we deliver natural gas and electricity to those customers, and our focus is on doing it safely, reliably and affordably. But the reality is there is increasing demand for energy across the entire state, and we serve through Upstate, we serve in Long Island, and we also serve in New York City. And it's our job to deliver that energy to meet that energy demand where, when and how folks need it.
How would you quantify that demand? Though?
Give us some idea, because we're talking NonStop about deals of AI data centers, whether it's New York or elsewhere.
Give us an idea. How stressed is the situation?
So we work with our New York Independent System operator the NISO, and NISO manages a what we call the large load Q. So it's essentially the companies that have indicated wanting to hook into the New York grid that have large power needs, and they estimate that the cumulative power need across those companies that are essentially in line to connect sometime over the next five or so years
is about ten gigawatts of energy. And so just to give you some context, at our peak in New York, we demand about three times that across the entire state. And another really important point is that one year ago that Q was one third the size.
It literally tripled.
In just one year.
All data centers, no, not all data what it's done, because it does seem like for many years we thought that power demand across the country would actually stay relatively glad, and it did stay relatively flat, But just in recent years we've seen so much of an uptick in demand. What are you seeing on your grids?
Well, there's definitely there, definitely is the impact of data centers. But New York is also very attractive to manufacturing and large scale manufacturing, particularly some of the modern manufacturing we see around semiconductors and computer components, it's very energy intensive, and companies with big power needs are drawn to New York and we are working to make sure that they have the power that they need, not just today, but well into the future.
So it's interesting, right, because we think about this White House, right and encouraging investment from foreign companies to build here. I mean, I guess you know that's the good thing, right, We want to see other companies investing into the United States. But there's a power grab on that too, right, as a result of that, in order to meet that well, I think potentially, I.
Think it is important to note that even if we weren't at this unique moment in time with rapidly increase demand for power, we still have a grid in New York and this is true across many places in the country. We have a grid that needs investment. We have assets that are close to one hundred years old.
Why right, right?
Tim?
Like?
How many people like, why if it's one hundred years old, why are you twenty years ago?
Right? Why didn't we make the investment? Then?
Yeah, we've been politics.
I've part that that was a lot.
Please you answer the question so I not.
Understand, because it's important.
We have been very careful about balancing the bill impacts which customers bear with the investments that we make in
our infrastructure. And even today where we look at assets that are seventy eighty one hundred years old, we're very strategic and pinpointed about which of those assets, which of those parts of infrastructure we replace, because we want to keep customer bills low, So we look for those opportunities where we can do multiple things with an investment, where we can replace an aging asset with something that's more modern and something that can carry more energy, something that
can unlock more energy that our generators have to connect into the grid, and something that's going to be more resilient to storms and better leverage technology so it's cheaper to maintain.
Does more resilient too, storms mean bearing power lines?
Is that the way to do it?
In some cases we do that, but it's also the type of infrastructure that we put up. We are replacing in places sometimes wooden poles with steel poles, just much stronger infrastructure.
Well, you know, and I think about how do you balance all of that?
Like affordability, as you know, has become quite the word that we are hearing a lot, certainly in the political environment. So how do you keep your investors happy and the grid reliable without rising bills that make your customers furious and invite regulatory and political pushback.
I mean, that is a hard mandate.
It is It is a difficult balance, and it's one that we navigate every single day. We do it through a number of avenues. We certainly work closely with our customers to help them manage costs, and we do that through a variety of bill assistance programs and energy efficiency programs and rebates, and we work We have consumer advocates whose job it is to specifically work with folks in
communities to help them manage their costs. We also, as I mentioned before, are very careful about where and how we invest in assets, and we make sure that if we're investing in an asset, that we're going to get more power from investing in that asset, that we're going to get more resiliency, and then we're going to get more efficiency from investing in that asset.
The President has been outspoken about his disdain for certain renewables, especially wind power. Your investment in renewables, are sourcing energy from renewables? Has that changed under this administration.
Well, we certainly support the all of the above energy approach and are pleased with the most recent version of the State Energy Report that's just come out today that leans into an all of the above approach. Given the rate at which demand for energy is increasing, we need to we need to be utilizing all of those opportunities, from renewables to natural gas to nuclear to make sure.
Is that more difficult if the federal government is not supportive of certain renewables.
We are working on the infrastructure to move power from point A to point B. So while we support projects like say the Nesti pipeline, that's a supply project. It's not our project, but we support it because we know how critical it is to the downstate community, and how reliant New York City and Long Island are on natural gas and how thin that reserve margin is and their energy demand for energy is growing as well. So we support NeSSI for those reasons. The other side of our
business is about building transmission. It's about building the highway over which the power moves. So the sourcing as to where it's coming from isn't a national grid decision. We work with generators of all kinds.
Bottom line, though, does this potentially as you guys are very careful about when you invest so that power prices don't go up, but are there going to be moments where prices are just going to go up just because of the environment. And it's hard to kind of predict everything. And forgive me just got about thirty seconds.
There are moments, and now is one of those moments where customers are seeing increases on their bills. And that's for a number of reasons, but primarily it's to be investing in infrastructure that is necessary. Those investments are necessary to make sure that folks continue to have the safe and reliable energy that they need.
And those investments include renewables, green all of it.
Well, we're investing in the ability to unlock those energy sources and be able to bring them onto the grid and move them at a greater frequency.