For Consolidated Edison, the pause after the storm in asking for utility rate increases is over.
On Friday, Con Edison asked state regulators to allow it to collect about $400 million more from customers next year. The increase, if approved, would translate to about $3 more per month for the typical electric customer and more than $2.50 per month for homes that receive gas from the company.
Con Edison delayed asking for the rate increase after Hurricane Sandy left hundreds of thousands of the company’s customers without power, many of them for as long as two weeks. Along with the rate increase, the company asked the state Public Service Commission for permission to spend $1 billion over the next four years to protect its equipment from another storm like Sandy.
Most of that money â€" $800 million - would go toward making parts of the electricity-distribution system submersible, to raising some equipment off the ground or surrounding it with higher floodgates and to burying some ovehead wires, the company said. The request is subject to a review by the commission that could last until the end of the year.
