Many Connecticut residents are up in arms after seeing a spike in electric bill costs this July.
“This is gonna put a lot of people out of their homes and a lot of businesses out of business,” said Sheri Sala, of Berlin.
Part of the surge has to do with usage, particularly through the heat wave. That said, while supply rates have mostly decreased for both Eversource and United Illuminating customers, those using Eversource, like Sheri Sala, are seeing a significant increase in the public benefits portion of their July bill.
Eversource says that’s a price utility companies neither control nor profit from.
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“In this particular case, the largest share of public benefits -- like 77% of it is related to Millstone and the fact that in 2017 the legislature passed the bill to guarantee that we would be buying power from Millstone,” said Sen. Norm Needleman.
But Eversource says it warned the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority of a looming surge last year when they say PURA artificially set rates too low to cover costs.
“It’s easy for us to be angry at the electric companies, but we need to start bringing accountability to government,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora.
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Rep. Candelora also says a factor was the extension of a state-mandated moratorium, linked to COVID-19 relief, which ensured that power would stay on for customers, regardless of payment.
“There are a number of people that haven’t paid their bills. The state accumulated a lot of debt from that and now they’re going to turn around and tell the consumers that actually pay their bills, you have to foot it,” Rep. Candelora said.
Those payments are now part of the equation, but Sen. Needleman said they’re pennies on the total cost of the bill.
“You can’t not do shut-offs when people don’t pay their bill, but we extended that for one extra six-month period for hardship customers,” Sen. Needleman said.
Public benefit costs are expected to remain at the current rate for the next 10 months, but specific costs are linked to usage
PURA was unavailable for comment.
