New York utilities can still shut off your power in extreme heat, and a pending bill would ban disconnection for 213 days a year, up from about 14

Whether utilities can shut off your power in extreme heat in New York

If you are asking whether utilities can shut off your power in extreme heat in New York, the answer today is yes. New York has no legal summer heat protection. Senate Bill S5690, introduced in the New York Senate on February 27, 2025 by Senator Samra G. Brouk, would change that. The bill remains referred to the Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee, its most recent recorded action dated January 7, 2026, so it has not passed and it has not failed.

What the bill would change

Right now, New York law bans disconnection outright for only about 14 days a year, the 2 week holiday period utilities observe under the Home Energy Fair Practices Act, Con Edison dates for that period run December 19 through January 1. From November 1 through April 15, a utility must only check whether cutting heat related service would cause serious harm to health or safety before disconnecting, a review requirement, not a ban. Senate Bill S5690 would replace all of that with 2 outright bans, May 1 through August 31 and December 1 through February 28, a combined 213 days a year, this site own count of the bill own dates. A utility would have to restore service by the first day of each protection season at no charge, and could not add late fees or penalties during either window, though a customer would still owe whatever they failed to pay. The bill would also require the Public Service Commission, the state agency that regulates utilities, to publish an annual report on disconnections broken down by income, age, and location, and to guard against utilities recovering the cost of compliance through a rate increase.

The gap between Con Edison and National Grid

The bill sponsor memo points to a gap between utilities today. Con Edison already voluntarily suspends shutoffs around 204 days a year on its own, the memo states, while National Grid, serving 2.2 million upstate customers, has no matching winter protection at all. The same memo counts 32 states as already having enacted some level of seasonal shutoff protection, though neither figure was independently confirmed this session, so both stay attributed to the sponsor memo rather than to an outside count.

The scale of shutoffs and overdue bills today

New York utilities shut off nearly 389,000 households for nonpayment in 2025. Niagara Mohawk, doing business as National Grid, accounted for nearly 61,000 of those shutoffs on its own. As of February 2026, more than 1.1 million households were 60 or more days overdue on their bills, owing 1.8 billion dollars combined, an average overdue balance around 1,600 dollars statewide and over 2,000 dollars for Con Edison customers. The bill sponsor memo estimates the law would bring continuing relief to more than 130,000 households a year going forward.

Where the bill stands, and its Assembly companion history

Senate Bill S5690 own path has stayed steady while its Assembly companion has not. Reading the Legislature own bill status pages directly, rather than news coverage from when the bill was introduced, shows the Assembly side has changed sponsors once already. Assembly Bill A6542, introduced by then Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, had its enacting clause stricken January 5, 2026, after Mamdani was elected New York City mayor and left the Assembly. A new Assembly companion, A10648, was introduced March 19, 2026, by Assembly member N. Simon. The Senate bill itself was never stricken and remains under Senator Brouk, unresolved in committee.