Eversource Files Early 2025 Rate Plan. What Will CT Residents Pay?

CONNECTICUT — Eversource Energy filed a rate request plan for the first half of 2025 with Connecticut regulators Friday that calls for a 2.2-cent increase per kilowatt hour on electricity bills.

The filing must be approved by the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. If it is, the rate would increase for standard service customers from 8.99 cents per kilowatt hour to 11.19 cents per kilowatt hour. Eversource officials were quick to point out in a news release that the rate is still less than 14.71 cents per kilowatt customers were billed for the first six months of this year.

Eversource officials also pointed out that the rate is 24 percent lower than last winter and the lowest winter supply rate since 2021.

Electric standard service rates are set twice a year, for January through June and July through December. Winter prices are typically higher.

"As the winter heating season arrives in Connecticut amidst continued volatility in the energy supply market, Eversource Standard Service customers can expect to pay a lower supply price compared to last winter, despite an increase from the current summer electric supply rate, consistent with the typical summer to winter upward adjustment," Eversource officials said.

Eversource officials said that energy supply procurement is a coordinated process between utilities, PURA and the state Office of Consumer Counsel. Following restructuring of the electric industry in Connecticut more than two decades ago, electric distribution companies such as Eversource are prohibited from generating electricity and are required to purchase the power that customers use from electric generators on the wholesale market through a highly transparent regulatory process, they said.

Overseen by PURA through its the procurement manager, and with OCC at the table, Eversource receives bids from electric generators that are determined solely by the cost of energy provided by generators on the open market. The most competitive offers received from suppliers – while complying with Connecticut’s clean energy requirements – are presented to regulators with no markup or profit to Eversource, they said.

"The state and utilities have no control over the energy supply price from power generators, which typically increases in the winter with liquefied natural gas shipped to the region to address natural gas supply constraints caused by increased demand for customers who use the fuel for heating and continued reliance on natural gas to produce roughly half of New England’s electricity," Eversource officials said.

Friday's filing is not related to Eversource's Yankee Gas distribution rate review filed earlier this week, which is focused on investments in safe, reliable natural gas distribution infrastructure for those customers and has nothing to do with electric customers or supply prices.

Attorney General William Tong, already mad over the Yankee Gas request for 29 percent more revenue, lashed out at Eversource for the second time this week.

"More awful news from our out-of-touch public utilities," he said about the electricity rate filing. "Let’s get real — this is not a decrease. This is yet another increase on top of the exorbitant bills that already hit this summer. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to Connecticut’s energy affordability crisis, but we've got to do better than this. These rates are the result of a competitive bidding process. This is pretty much set in stone at this point. But that doesn’t mean we just need to take it and move on. Connecticut families have a right to be outraged, and have a right to demand better. Everything has to be on the table, and that includes reckoning with why New England has the highest electric transmission costs per mile of anywhere else in the country.

"That includes reckoning with the consequences, both positive and negative, of the Millstone deal. That includes how we pay for the cost of necessary programs that have kept the lights on for families facing unprecedented challenges. That must include a real commitment from our public utilities to stop their onslaught of padded revenue demands. In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing what I do every day—which is to fight for ratepayers in every single proceeding before PURA and to push back in every way I can against these exorbitant and unsustainable increases."

Things became even more political as the afternoon dragged on Friday.

The Connecticut Senate Republican Caucus issued the following statement:

"The pain for working and middle class families in Connecticut is going to keep increasing. That's because majority Democrats who hold all the political power in our state refuse to do anything to provide relief. Democrats have refused to go into special session to take action. They scoff at the more than 68,000 state residents who signed a petition for a special session. Meanwhile, the already unaffordable monthly bills keep rising under Democrat rule."