New York’s utility watchdog has put National Grid on notice. The New York State Public Service Commission this week released a sweeping state-ordered audit that calls out broad operational and customer service problems at the company’s New York utilities. The independent review flags gaps in billing, procurement, governance and long-term planning, and it lands with a thick stack of recommendations the company is now under pressure to carry out. Regulators have ordered National Grid to come back with implementation plans, and the message between the lines is clear: customers and local officials are going to be watching how fast this all gets fixed.
What the auditors dug into
The report runs more than 300 pages and delivers 72 formal recommendations that touch on everything from customer service and billing controls to system reliability. As FingerLakes1 notes, auditors acknowledged that National Grid has made some progress in recent years, but they also found recurring governance and accountability problems that have not been fully cleaned up.
The numbers hitting customers’ wallets
One of the biggest headaches highlighted in the audit is long-term estimated billing. Auditors reported tens of thousands of estimated accounts and a sharp rise in estimated reads over the review period. According to WKTV, the report lays out counts of estimated bills and a large percentage jump in accounts with estimated reads through September 2025. Meter-reading equipment failures and backlogs meant many customers went months without an actual read, a breakdown that auditors say exposed households and small businesses to unnecessary financial risk.
Big spending, lingering infrastructure questions
The audit also raises a blunt question: has National Grid’s recent capital spending actually made the system more reliable. Department records and prior asset-condition filings show that parts of the transmission and distribution network are aging, and auditors said that heavy investment in asset-management programs, roughly $900 million on electric asset efforts since 2010 according to the audit, has not translated into clear systemwide improvement. For context on asset condition and inspection programs, state documents from the New York State Department of Public Service outline ongoing reviews of transmission and distribution components and the strategies for replacing them.
National Grid’s response and what comes next
National Grid has told regulators it broadly accepts the findings and sees the recommendations as constructive, saying it will put together detailed implementation plans that address each item in the report. As reported by FingerLakes1, the company plans to submit those implementation schedules to the PSC by mid-July. Regulators will then have to review and approve the plans before National Grid starts rolling out changes.
What it all means for New York ratepayers
Under the PSC’s audit process, commission members and Department of Public Service staff will scrutinize National Grid’s implementation plan and can demand revisions or extra reporting to safeguard customers. The audit lays out specific operational targets and oversight checkpoints that could shape future rate cases and regulatory filings, and it hands state staff a roadmap for follow-up inspections and performance tracking. Similar audits, paired with implementation plans, have been used in earlier proceedings to push New York utilities toward concrete fixes and more transparency, so this report is likely to loom large in the next round of battles over reliability and the bills that land in customers’ mailboxes.
