National Grid Defends Split Gas-Electric Forecasts — SkimNews
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- Philip DeCicco, general counsel for National Grid New York, disputes a Utility Dive opinion piece that argued 'conflicting' gas and electric forecasts drive unnecessary infrastructure investment and higher customer bills.
- Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. (NMPC) serves 1.7 million electric customers but only about 600,000 gas customers, a nearly three-fold difference that the response says makes any direct forecast comparison misleading on its face.
- Approximately 60% of heat pump conversions in NMPC territory involve customers switching from delivered fuels such as oil or propane rather than natural gas, so they show up in electric planning but not gas planning.
- National Grid reports that only about 5% of NMPC customers who install heat pumps fully disconnect from the gas system, while the original analysis implied roughly half would leave — described in the response as 'approximately ten times higher' than observed customer behavior.
- The New York Public Service Commission management audit specifically identified National Grid's strong performance in both electric and gas load forecasting and called out governance and quality-assurance improvements, per the response.
- National Grid serves more than 4.2 million customers across New York State, from Buffalo to Albany and Brooklyn to Montauk, and the response argues regional differences in climate, housing stock and infrastructure demand varied forecasting assumptions by territory.
Why it matters: The public rebuttal frames a policy fight over whether utility forecasting methodologies are inflating customer costs during New York's energy transition. With the utility citing a NYPSC management audit and observed customer data — 95% of heat-pump adopters retaining gas service — the contested premise may now move from opinion pages into rate-proceeding scrutiny.
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