Utilities · New York City
Con Edison in 2026: expensive power, complicated credits
Written by the Solar Learning Lab research deskUpdated August 17, 20268 min read
No utility in our coverage charges more for a kilowatt-hour than Con Edison, and none makes solar compensation harder to explain at a kitchen table. A ConEd solar customer chooses between two crediting systems, pays a monthly charge that exists only for solar owners, and watches both reset every year. The upside is the same thing that causes the pain: when grid power costs this much, every kilowatt-hour your roof produces is worth a lot.
29.93¢
New York statewide average residential price per kWh in May 2026; the city runs higher
$1.29
Monthly CBC per kW DC for net metered solar, versus $0.65 on the Value Stack
5.7%
Average summer 2026 bill increase Con Edison flagged for city residential customers
Price a roof against ConEd rates
The calculator runs New York rates, the NY-Sun incentive and state credit into one payback view. Numbers first, contact info never required.
Run my New York numbersWhat ConEd power actually costs
Here is an honest admission most solar sites skip: there is no clean, published Con Edison residential cents-per-kWh number. The utility's own rates page defers to PSC tariff documents, and a real bill is delivery charges plus a supply charge that floats with the market. What Con Edison does publish is directional. For summer 2026 it told city residential customers to expect roughly a 5.7 percent increase, driven mostly by supply costs, and it illustrates impacts using a 280 kWh month, where the increase lands at $4.03.
For scale, the statewide 2024 averages were 571 kWh and $139.53 a month at 24.43 cents. City usage skews lower and city prices skew higher, which is exactly the shape that favors rooftop solar: small systems cover meaningful shares of consumption at the most expensive rates in our coverage.
Sources: Con Edison, about our rates; Rates and Tariffs; EIA Table 5A.
Net metering vs the Value Stack
Rider R of Con Edison's tariff covers customer generators and holds both compensation paths. Phase One net metering is the familiar deal: exports offset consumption at retail value. The VDER Value Stack instead pays per component, and the 2026 statement effective February 1 prices those components as follows:
| Value Stack component | 2026 value |
|---|---|
| Environmental value | $0.03103 / kWh |
| Capacity, Phase Two | $0.03198 and $0.02256 / kWh |
| Capacity, Alternative 3 | $6.87 and $4.80 / kW |
| Capacity, Phase One | $0.01617 and $0.00864 / kWh |
| Hydro | $0.02327 / kWh |
| Community Credit | $0.12000 / kWh |
| Demand Reduction Value | $140.76 / kW-year |
Source: Con Edison VDER Value Stack credits, Statement No. 101, effective February 1, 2026. Several LSRV zones show zero megawatts remaining.
The tariff page also lists SC No. 11 Buy-Back Service and Standby Service for larger or unusual configurations, but a typical rooftop lives in Rider R. The choice is not academic: it changes your CBC rate, your credit stability and how oversizing behaves. Community solar projects lean on the Community Credit; a homeowner mostly cares whether retail offset beats the component sum for their usage pattern.
Tariff structure: Con Edison distributed generation tariffs.
The charge only solar owners pay
The Customer Benefit Contribution is a fixed monthly charge per kW of DC system size, created by a May 13, 2022 PSC order in Case 15-E-0751. For 2026, Con Edison residential customers pay $1.29 per kW DC on Phase One net metering or $0.65 per kW DC on the Value Stack. It applies to systems interconnected on or after January 1, 2022, skips pre-2022 systems, community solar and demand-billed commercial, and changes annually. NYSERDA publishes the same figures, which is the kind of two-source confirmation we like before we put a number on a page.
On a typical city rowhouse system the CBC is under ten dollars a month. It does not kill the deal. What it does is reward right-sizing, since the charge scales with nameplate capacity whether or not the extra panels earn their keep.
Sources: Con Edison CBC Statement No. 7, effective January 1, 2026; NYSERDA 2026 CBC rates.
Rates rise on a schedule
Con Edison's approved three-year plan runs through December 31, 2028, with the annual average electric delivery rate up 2.8 percent and city residential summer bills up about 5.7 percent in 2026. Press coverage pegs the annual delivery increases at 3.5, 3.2 and 3.1 percent across the three years; we could not confirm those exact figures on a Con Edison or PSC page, so treat them as secondary. The direction is not in dispute, and it cuts one way for solar: every approved increase raises the value of a self-supplied kilowatt-hour.
Pair this with the city specifics, from the DOB permit pathways to the state tax credit, on our New York City page and New York state page.
Sources: Con Edison, about our rates; secondary coverage in the New York Post and Yonkers Times.
ConEd solar questions, answered
Should I pick net metering or the Value Stack?
How big is the Customer Benefit Contribution in dollars?
Why can't I find a simple ConEd cents-per-kWh rate?
Do the credits change after I interconnect?
Does this apply outside New York City?
What we could not verify
Open items as of August 17, 2026: a primary-source SC 1 residential rate in cents per kWh (Con Edison defers to PSC tariff leaves), whether any part of the city such as the Rockaways sits with a different utility, the exact 2027 CBC and Value Stack values (both reset annually), and the per-year delivery increase percentages beyond Con Edison's own 2.8 percent average figure. We flag these rather than round them off. Corrections run through our editorial policy.
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