InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/power-to-the-people/page/11)
D. Maurice KreisPower 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.
With the exception of Liberty itself and the labor union representing its employees, every single party to the case that filed testimony, including the Staff of the PUC, has now declared its opposition to the plan to spend more than $400 million and build these new assets.
Every so often, even amid the damp grey fog of utility regulation, a blinding flash of insight strikes.
Therefore, the pathway to the “true regional approach” is by getting the FERC to force ISO New England to be a more dynamic organization.
Alas, 29 years later, the utilities are more or less ignoring the statute and the PUC is letting them get away with it.
Eversource plans to make its big rate case filing next week at the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), so the company spent this past week dropping two big and distracting glitter bombs.
Anti-CWIP was the issue that catapulted Hugh Gallen to an upset victory in the 1978 gubernatorial election that ousted three-term incumbent Meldrim Thomson.
You can read James C. Bonbright’s famous treatise, Principles of Public Utility Rates, of more than 400 pages. Or take D. Maurice Kreis’s word for it. Hmm.
NEPOOL even features free food; there is always a lavish and tasty lunchtime buffet at all-day NEPOOL meetings. Except the food isn’t free; ultimately, it is paid for by the region’s electric customers.
News that these two utilities will institute rate proceedings this spring was not a surprise, but it is still a big deal.
Who isn’t wild about ratepayer-funded energy efficiency?