How Lamont Wants To Regulate Utilities After Isaias Debacle

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont said he wants to switch how utility companies are given money by the state to fund improvements to Connecticut’s grid system. Customers have been funding hundreds of millions of dollars worth of improvements to make the grid more resilient to storms, but so far it seems those investments haven’t paid off after Tropical Storm Isaias caused one of the largest power outages in recent state history.

“Right now its called rate of return regulation which is sort of whatever you spend we’ll give you another nine percent… and we’ll live to fight another day and that makes no sense to me,” Lamont said. “That means we give you a rate of return on the good things you do, the bad things you do there’s no incentives there for performance.”

Lamont said calling for the Eversource CEO's resignation was basically useless since the company has had multiple CEOs since the 2011 storm outages.

The state's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has opened an investigation into Eversource and United Illuminating's preparation and response to the storm. PURA is also looking to investigate the hundreds of millions of ratepayer dollars that were marked to improve reliability and resilance.

Instead, Lamont wants performance-based rate of return, especially when it comes to reliability and resilience of the electrical grid. The change would reward utilities who invest smartly to make their systems more reliable and punish those who fail to do so.

The performance-based regulation would also be tied to affordability, customer satisfaction and renewable energy goals.

Lamont once again was particularly critical of Eversource, which as of late Monday night still had 45,000 power outages across its territory. United Illuminating had fixed nearly all of its outages by Saturday night.

Local leaders also slammed Eversource’s storm response, particularly when it came to communication and coordination. The utility had more than 900,000 outages caused by the storm.

Westport First Selectman Jim Marpe said that 97 percent of his town was without power at one point and as of late Monday afternoon there were still outages. Public works crews had difficulty coordinating with Eversource and Marpe said they had no clue if there were two, 20 or 200 Eversource crews in town at any point.

“The information that we received is often not as good and up to date as we would like it to be,” he said.

The town also wasn’t getting timely make safe crews, which help make downed power lines safe so local crews can clear roadways.

“After each storm we have a lessons learned and it seems like some of the same lessons we learned after storm Sandy, storm Irene continue on,” said Milford Mayor Ben Blake, which is served by UI.

Blake was also critical of Altice, which provides its Optimum Internet service to Milford and surrounding communities. He said the service lately has been terrible and that it can make it difficult for residents to work remotely during the pandemic.

Eversource officials said that the company has replaced 550 miles of downed wire from the storm, 2,000 utility poles and 1,000 damaged transformers. The company has also helped remove 10,000 downed trees.

“We know how urgently customers need their power restored, especially right now given the pandemic and hot summer weather, and we are making significant progress,” said Eversource President of Regional Electric Operations Craig Hallstrom. “Our crews and the thousands of out-of-state crews working alongside them have done a tremendous job under difficult conditions – working in the heat while abiding by social distancing and pandemic safety protocols.”

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