On April 21, 2026, the New York State Senate passed the Accelerate Solar for Affordable Power (ASAP) Act (2025-S6570A). The bill sets a new goal of 20 gigawatts (GW) of distributed solar energy capacity by 2035 and extends the NY-Sun program to facilitate reaching that goal. It also directs the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) to advance reforms to reduce the time and cost of interconnecting distributed energy resources (DERs), like solar and energy storage projects, to the grid. 

If passed by the New York Assembly and signed by the Governor, the Act would be effective immediately upon its adoption.

The ASAP Act’s new 20 GW by 2035 goal marks an increase the PSC’s current 10 GW by 2030 goal. The Act further directs the PSC to issue an order authorizing additional funding for the continuation of the NY-Sun Program to meet that 20 GW goal and to ensure that the program “operates continuously, without interruption, until the distributed solar goal is reached.”

To reduce deployment costs, the ASAP Act also takes significant steps to address long-standing interconnection barriers to deployment.  

For instance, even though developers pay for all upgrades that are necessary to interconnect their project to the utility’s grid, they have a limited ability to control the costs or construction schedule for those upgrades. Under New York’s interconnection rules, the utility determines the scope and cost of any distribution grid infrastructure needed to permit the project to operate. The developer in practice has few options to challenge those project-specific findings or require less costly alternatives.

Cost transparency and oversight are therefore essential to keep interconnection budgets in line and facilitate the sharing of cost-saving practices across utilities. The ASAP Act directs the PSC to issue an order mandating that all electric corporations file a report with the PSC itemizing the costs of grid upgrades needed to interconnect new DERs. These reports will become the basis for future distribution upgrade cost estimates. The PSC must also consider proposals to create greater cost certainty for distribution upgrades to limit the risk of uncapped utility cost overruns and must issue an order on the subject within 180 days of the effective date of the ASAP Act. 

The ASAP Act also gives the PSC one year to establish a statewide program for flexible interconnection, i.e., “the use of smart-grid technology to monitor and actively manage distributed energy resources.”  This technology could significantly increase DER hosting capacity by allowing the utility to prevent or curtail a project’s generation in rare situations where transformer banks or major electrical infrastructure are unavailable. Such situations could otherwise require constructing expensive substation upgrades to accommodate the project’s output, but if such risks can be addressed through curtailment or other forms of DER management, then more projects would be able to interconnect to the existing distribution grid at lower cost. For instance, NYSEIA and NY-BEST have noted in a recent filing that Con Edison could “significantly expand its available [battery energy storage system or “BESS”] hosting capacity by embracing direct transfer trip (“DTT”) or other tripping solutions to prevent BESS charging during contingency scenarios.” 

Finally, the PSC would also have to establish a defined distribution system voltage threshold of 69KV, excluding lines under Federal Regulatory Energy Commission jurisdiction. Resources owned by electric corporations with a voltage at or below 69KV will be considered distribution for the purposes of DER interconnection and compensation. This could allow more DER projects to obtain retail rate compensation, such as through the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (“VDER”) tariff.

Taken together, this suite of interconnection reforms could improve one of the major cost risks for DERs and thereby reduce the amount of NY-Sun needed to achieve the 20 GW goal.