Feature
Warning: A Pillar of Utility Regulation May Be About To Topple
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I’m sorry if that sounds insulting to the many people with whom I am in regular contact at the state’s regulated electric, gas, and water utilities.
InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/author/donald-m-kreis/page/4/)
I’m sorry if that sounds insulting to the many people with whom I am in regular contact at the state’s regulated electric, gas, and water utilities.
Electric consumers are on default service if they do not – as 81 percent of Eversource customers don’t – exercise their right to buy power from a non-utility supplier.
By signing on to the Zellem Report, the three PUC commissioners have now fatally compromised their impartiality and, I respectfully suggest, must disqualify themselves from ruling on the Triennial Energy Efficiency Plan the utilities are scheduled to file in July.
Second, when real-time prices soar to these heights it means something is wrong with the bulk power transmission system and there is danger of rolling blackouts or, worse, an uncontrolled system failure.
What a year 2022 has been for the state’s beleaguered electric customers. Rates soared to astronomical levels – and now, you might conclude, our four utilities even managed to ruin Christmas for thousands and thousands of people.
People seem to smile in the face of the habit I have acquired in recent years of proclaiming Chanukah the “Jewish Festival of Energy Efficiency.” But it’s no joke.