As New York State Energy Planning Board charts our energy future to implement the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), it is essential that we consider daily/hourly/seasonal demand profiles for each consuming region. Such sober analysis would help identify what combination of generation technologies can reliably serve the electricity loads and avoid blackouts… all while being cost effective and environmentally sustainable.

The below chart illustrates the daily grid electric load for New York State. There is an orange dot for each day corresponding to the average load in megawatts (MWs). //

However, let’s focus on minimum daily load. The rectangle underneath the teal line represents New York’s grid electricity needs that is constant over 365 days of the year. Since the 2023 total demand was 16,785 MW, 79% of New York’s electricity consumption is constant — also known as “baseload demand.”

The below chart graphs minimum daily load (in gigawatt-hours, GWh) against total demand over the 7 years 2017-2023. The light teal box shows the range of baseload demand over the period. Over 3/4 of New York’s grid electric consumption is constant.