One of the U.S.‘s largest investor-owned energy utilities, Consolidated Edison (Con Edison), is planning to spend US$200 million on demand reduction technologies. Con Edison has filed a proposal with the New York Public Utilities Commission for a Brooklyn/Queens Demand Management Program (BQDM) that it hopes can defer the US$1 billion cost of building a new substation and expanding two existing ones.

Earlier this year New York governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled plans for an “energy modernisation initiative that will fundamentally transform the way electricity is distributed and used in New York State”. This will include the creation of a leading energy storage marketplace, argues Bill Radvak, chief executive officer of American Vanadium, whose company recently installed a vanadium flow battery storage system for New York’s Metropolitan Transport Authority in Manhattan.