When utilities talk about “investing billions” in New York’s electric grid, it sounds like they’re risking their own capital on long-term bets. Big projects. Big risk. Big payoff.

That’s not how this system works, though.

Which is why the public response to grid-upgrade headlines isn’t, “Great, fix the grid,” but, “Why am I paying for all of this while shareholders still get guaranteed returns?”

That question isn’t cynical. It’s rational ... and shows up in recent reporting.

The Times Union’s Ezra Bitterman laid out the scope of the effort and its price tag recently. In 2023, the Public Service Commission approved $4.3 billion for 62 transmission projects statewide, with costs spread across all ratepayers. By 2030, average households are projected to pay roughly $32 to $64 per year for those transmission upgrades alone. National Grid’s “Upstate Upgrade” includes rebuilding or constructing roughly 1,000 miles of transmission lines and 45 substations.

And it doesn’t matter which utility we’re talking about — they all operate with the same set of rules. Unfortunately, not many people know what they are.

Those projected costs are real for users like You and Me. And so are the grid’s limitations. Much of New York’s electric system is old, constrained, and poorly aligned with where new demand is emerging.

But what matters just as much as what is being built is who is actually paying — and how the system is designed to work.

In regulated utility world, words like “investment” and “spending” mean something very different than they do in everyday life.

Utilities do not typically invest their own money the way a private company would when opening a factory or launching a new product. Instead, they operate under a cost-of-service model built around something called the rate base. When a utility........

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