Power Trends: New York ISO Podcast

As temperatures drop, New Yorkers turn up their thermostats and demand for electricity rises.

In anticipation of the cold season, the NYISO Operations team develops a winter preparedness report that evaluates the ability of the grid to meet demand on the coldest days of the year.

The NYISO’s 2024-25 Winter Assessment considers load forecast, the capacity of generators, the transmission system, and the availabilit...

How will the demand for electricity, a changing generation mix, and the transmission system evolve over the next 10 years? This is the question that our Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) examines in order to assess and identify impacts to reliability.

In the latest Power Trends podcast, Senior VP of System & Resource Planning Zach Smith dives deep into the 2024 RNA to explain how the NYISO analyzes demand forecasts, seasonal va...

As the diversity and scale of energy resources have evolved in recent years, NYISO’s market design team has been working hard to create and implement market innovations to support those technologies.

The most recent example of NYISO's commitment to innovation is the launch of a first-in-the nation program to integrate aggregations of distributed energy resources (DER) into the wholesale electric markets. This ground-b...

Our mission at the NYISO is to ensure power system reliability and competitive markets for New York in a clean-energy future, and to work with all stakeholders to build the cleanest, most reliable electric system in the nation. 

In keeping with our mission, we operate a capacity market to meet resource adequacy requirements and serve consumer demand. The capacity market acts as a transparent and cost-effective mechanism to avoid the...

When we talk about building a more sustainable future, the journey is as important as the destination. Steering the electric grid through these monumental changes requires leadership and creativity. 

As the NYISO’s Director of Grid Transition, Udayan Nair oversees the integration of new elements of the industry into our operations and planning functions and works to facilitate coordination across teams.

“A change of this magnitude is...

What does the path to a decarbonized grid by 2040 look like? Dr. C. Lindsay Anderson of Cornell University is working to answer the question of where best on the grid to incorporate large amounts of new generation on the future grid to achieve optimal performance. 

Anderson is chair of Cornell’s Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on creating detailed models of energy systems to see how the...

Columbia University’s Daniel Zarrilli knows a thing or two about New York City and the effects of climate change.

For almost a decade prior to Hurricane Sandy, he worked on the city’s waterfront, managing maintenance and construction of the city’s piers and bulkheads, overseeing cruise terminals and other maritime assets, and working with coastal communities on a variety of local projects. That experience along the city’s 520-mile s...

You might say Nicole Bouchez’s role as the NYISO’s Consumer Interest Liaison and Senior Principal Economist combines deep data analytics with good, old-fashioned customer service. 

She has an especially important responsibility evaluating the impacts of major market design changes for stakeholders, policymakers, and market participants. That’s where her PhD in International Economics comes in handy. 

But a large...

In this episode of our Power Trends podcast, Julie Tighe discusses her role leading the New York League of Conservation Voters, and her recent addition to the NYISO’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC). The EAC, which was formed in 2005, provides information and analysis on state and federal environmental policies relative to NYISO’s mission of grid reliability.

“No one is going to be happy if the air conditioning goes o...

New York’s recent peak day for electricity consumption came during a heatwave, as millions of people relied on their air conditioners to keep cool. That’s not unusual. However, some of the circumstances leading up to that day still provided a challenge.

On our latest Power Trends podcast, NYISO’s Vice President of Operations Aaron Markham discusses what goes into maintaining a reliable grid during a late-season heatwave. 

The peak lo...

In our latest podcast, we sat down with Rana Mukerji, NYISO’s SVP of Market Structures, to learn about his journey from growing up in Calcutta, India to becoming widely regarded as one of the ­­industry's leading designers of electricity markets. We ask Rana about his past career experience working for General Electric and ABB, and how the markets must evolve to accommodate a new set of renewable resources while keeping the gr...

Episode 26 of the Power Trends podcast delivers a change of pace for our listeners. In this episode, NYISO market mitigation economist Michelle Merlis discusses her long and challenging path to becoming a world-class trail runner. 

While Michelle's early years found her on the basketball court, she discovered her passion for competitive running while earning a master’s degree in agricultural economics at Purdue University....

“The objective is the reliability of the grid,” VP of System & Resource Planning Zach Smith says about the process his group oversees studying the impacts of connecting new electric resources to the grid. Because of state policies and technological advancements, more developers are seeking to connect to the grid, creating more demands on the New York ISO in overseeing the study process.

Smith is a frequent guest of the Power Tre...

In our latest Power Trends Podcast, we interview two leading Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts about the impact of wholesale natural gas prices on winter electricity costs in New York.

We spoke to Dr. Tyler Hodge, Senior Economist in the Office of Energy Analysis, and Corrina Ricker, a Certified Data Scientist on the Natural Gas Markets team, to dive into the findings of EIA’s latest Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO). ...

Every five minutes, 24 hours a day, electricity in New York State is bought and sold through competitive wholesale electric markets administered by the NYISO.

And while we may not think about electricity the same way we do about other products and services, competitive wholesale electric markets are truly dynamic, with hundreds of buyers and sellers, or “market participants,” involved in the process of meeting consumer de...

The NYISO recently released a new report that identifies the unprecedented level of electrical system investment necessary to achieve New York State’s climate policy requirements. Developed in collaboration with stakeholders and state agencies, the 2021-2040 System and Resource Outlook (the Outlook) uses various scenarios to identify potential pathways for transmission and supply investments that will support a reliable transition ...

In our latest Power Trends Podcast, we interviewed two leading U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts about domestic and international price trends and how world energy supply and demand are impacting wholesale electricity prices in New York.  

We spoke to Dr. Tyler Hodge, Senior Economist in the Office of Energy Analysis, and Corrina Ricker, a Certified Data Scientist on the Natural Gas Markets team, to dive into the...

It’s going to take time and precision to build the grid of the future. Managing reliability carefully and investing in the right technologies as we transition to a grid increasingly based on clean energy will be key to success.
These are the messages of Dr. Karen Wayland, a noted policy expert who focuses on the path to grid modernization and infrastructure improvements aimed at a cleaner, more efficient, more secure #gridofth...

Our stakeholders recently approved changes to market rules which, if accepted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, will help us meet New York’s zero-emissions mandates by supporting new investments in energy resources.

The proposal was created to make it easier for clean-energy resources such as solar or wind to take part in the competitive, wholesale markets that serve the New York grid. The project was overwhelmingly suppo...