Feature
Blameworthy Characters: Three Well-Paid Electricity Titans Worth Watching
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As New Hampshire emerges from a long winter of ratepayer discontent, the hunt for blameworthy characters continues. Here are some nominations.
InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/power-to-the-people/)
Power to the People is a new column by D. Maurice Kreis, New Hampshire’s Consumer Advocate. Kreis and his staff of four represent the interests of residential utility customers before the NH Public Utilities Commission and elsewhere.
As New Hampshire emerges from a long winter of ratepayer discontent, the hunt for blameworthy characters continues. Here are some nominations.
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.
On November 30, the CLG held its most recent quarterly meeting at the Colonnade Hotel near the Prudential Center in Boston. There was plenty of food, as usual.
Joseph R. Nolan, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of Eversource, received nearly $6.5 million in compensation last year. Or, at least, so says the 2022 annual proxy statement of the region’s biggest utility empire.
As natural gas and, especially, electric rates have soared in recent months there is widespread concern that utilities, their shareholders, and their executives are profiting handsomely at the expense of struggling ratepayers.