Eversource spent $4.9M in fight to hike rates

Eversource Energy ran up the heftiest legal bill ever for a Massachusetts power company in pursuit of a rate hike when it amassed $4.9 million in costs for lawyers and expert testimony.

The utility said this week in a filing that it paid millions in legal fees, filing costs and study expenses to convince the state Department of Public Utilities that its $96 million rate increase is necessary.

National Consumer Law Center attorney Charlie Harak was concerned about the sum and indicated regulators should take a close look before rubber-stamping the costs.

“Legal fees in a rate case are not really about providing a necessary service to ratepayer and therefore should be as low as is feasible,” Harak told the Herald.

The $4.9 million legal tab — which is paid for by ratepayers if approved by regulators — is nearly two times the largest amount ever approved for a utility company seeking a rate increase when National Grid was allowed to bill its customers $2.6 million in 2010, according to an analysis from Attorney General Maura Healey’s office.

Healey’s office, which is challenging Eversource’s rate hike, also noted the company’s legal bill is twice as much as its entire $2.3 million budget for ratepayer advocacy.

Eversource said a number of factors drove the high legal costs, including it being a combined filing from two of its companies, the first litigated rate review in 25 years and a midcase change in rate design that itself cost $1 million to make.

“The overall cost is a sign of how thorough the department’s scrutiny was of our rate proposals,” Eversource spokeswoman Priscilla Ress said in a statement.

Eversource, which has 3.7 million gas and electric customers in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, said this week it earned $260 million in the third quarter, down slightly from the $265 million it reeled in during the same period last year.