Eversource Takes Another Shot At A Rate Increase For CT Customers

CONNECTICUT — About half-a-year since state regulators called an electricity rate hike too much to handle for customers, especially during a global health pandemic, Eversource Energy has filed another rate increase request.

Eversource officials filed the latest rate proposal Monday with the Connecticut Public Utility Regulatory Authority. PURA took the increase away over the summer when public outcry demanded it after some bills went up by more than a hundred dollars.

Eversource officials Tuesday were insisting the proposal is not coming without deep thought.

"It's especially challenging because it's a difficult time for customers to pay for an increase," officials said in a company presentation sent to Patch. "If we further postpone the entire increase, it would exacerbate the problem down the road compounding the amount that will need to be collected from customers."

Utility officials continued, "Given these exceptional circumstances, there are opportunities to minimize bill impacts by spreading the postponed costs out over time, so they do not have to be paid by customers all at once. Eversource has filed a plan to address the postponed rate adjustment with PURA, as well as establish rate recovery for 2021 costs."

Two considerations were included in the filing:

• A single rate increase, which would take effect May 1, designed to up the average customer bill by $12.55 per month or 8.2 percent. That amounts to a $166 average monthly bill with the average Eversource residential usage of 700 kilowatt hours per month.
• A two-phase increase that would spread the "recovery" money from last year's rate hike postponement over a three-year period. A May 1 increase would raise bills by 0.7 percent, or $1.06, to an average of $154 a month. The second increase would take effect Oct. 1 and increase the average bill by $5, or 3.24 percent, to $159 per month.

Eversource officials said they would be offering "different options" to lessen the impacts to customers' bills when recovering the postponed costs.

"We understand the impact that the pandemic has had on customers and we're offering to spread costs out over time, so they don’t have to be paid all at once," they said. "We want to help customers. We urge any customer having difficulty paying their bill to contact us."

In late July, PURA ordered all Eversource charges back to June 30 rates while "every component" of customers' electric bills were examined.

The new charges had gone into effect July 1, and they included an approved 4 percent rate increase, and for half the month customers had been complaining about the increase in their utility bills.

Eversource had pinpointed the delivery charge as the culprit.

Taren O'Connor, the director of legislation regulations and communications for PURA, said Eversource is required to submit any proposed rate adjustments no later than March 1 of each year.

Monday’s filing complies with the directive, she said.

The public can review the materials here.

Historically these adjustments were made on Jan, 1 and July 1,but last year’s decision shifted the effective dates to May 1 and September 1, she said.

The steps, O'Connor said, are part of the "administrative rate adjustment process," by state statute 16-19b.

The law allows electric utilities to seek annual rate adjustments of certain "reconciling" components of a customer’s bill. The reconciling components "almost exclusively" are designed to recoup federal/regional costs and state-mandated policy costs.

PURA has created a short, narrated presentation to provide a summary of the bill components, accessible here for Eversource customers.

Over the next six weeks, PURA will assess the request and is scheduled to issue a ruling on or around April 28, she said.