Winter electric rates for Eversource customers will increase about $15 a month beginning Jan.1 largely because of seasonal market conditions that push up the cost of natural gas, the utility said in a filing Friday with state regulators.
The increase, which will run from January to June, will appear in the supply portion of customer electric bills. Utilities such as Eversource do not profit from the supply price, which is the price the utility pays suppliers and passes along to customers for the electricity it distributes.
Eversource said the winter increase in supply costs this year is 24 percent lower than last year.
The billing increase follows an spike during a heat wave last summer that created a customer backlash.
The summer incense was due to an increase in the public benefit portion of the bill, which reflects costs the state requires electric utilities to incur on state mandated clean energy and social welfare programs. As is the case with supply, the utilities do not profit on public benefit billing.
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There was predictable political criticism of the latest increase, but it included frustration with the state’s electric distribution scheme, which grows ever more expensive.
“Democrats have refused to go into special session to take action,” the state Senate Republican Caucus said. “They scoff at the more than 68,000 state residents who signed a petition for a special session.”
Attorney General William Tong, a regular Democratic critic of utilities, called for a re-examination of a state energy policy that, among other things, locks the utilities into buying electricity from the Millstone nuclear power station in Waterford, even when less expensive sources of supply are available.
“This is yet another increase on top of the exorbitant bills that already hit this summer,” Tong said. “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.
Douglas Hook
Eversource Energy offices at 107 Selden St., Berlin.
“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.”
The state and the electric utilities have no control over the prices charged by power generators – a price that typically increases in winter when natural gas must be shipped into New England to meet increased demand. Natural gas generation produces about half of New England’s electricity.
“The supply portion of the bill is typically the largest and most volatile because it’s vulnerable to market forces, and we’ve certainly experienced those dramatic swings in energy prices over the last few years,” Eversource resident of Connecticut Electric Operations Steve Sullivan said. “While energy prices have come down significantly from a couple years ago, we continue to encourage customers to shop for a third-party supplier and potentially lock in a lower rate.”
Electric standard service rates are set twice a year, for January through June and July through December. Winter prices are typically higher.
