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New York's energy equipment is old -- and the bill to replace it is about to come due. As National Grid executives make their pitch to state regulators to raise electric rates for consumers and businesses, they keep stressing the same thing: they have waited long enough to put money back into their aging transmission and distribution system, and it's now time to take care of it.

The British energy company says it has spent $750 million on its electric hardware in upstate New York over the past eight years without asking customers to share the burden.

Coupled with declining electrical use and a rising tide of late bill payments because of the recession, National Grid is spending about $390 million a year more on its operations now than it forecast when it acquired Syracuse-based Niagara Mohawk in 2001.

"The state of New York has an aged infrastructure," said Tom King, president of National Grid's U.S. operations. "We do not fundamentally recover our costs, but we've been going ahead and proceeding with investing."

That's led to declining profit margins that are well below the industry average.

And although that may generate little sympathy, considering that many Americans are out of work and barely scraping by to pay household bills, the utility insists that falling margins could hurt its ability to attract investment money from the capital markets in the future.