Potential for a power play

Report expected soon on whether state should leave regional energy organization

Just how serious Connecticut officials are about severing ties with regional electric grid operator ISONew England should become more clear within weeks.

That’s when officials with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority will release a report providing an analysis of the pros and cons of such a move. Kristina Rozek, a DEEP spokeswoman, said that agency officials expect to release the report “in the near future.”

DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes first publicly proposed the idea of a pullout from ISO-NE during an environmental summit last month at Trinity College in Hartford. Dykes said “a lack of leadership” at the Holyoke, Mass.based grid operator is hindering Connecticut in its efforts to address climate change and in other areas.

“We are at the mercy of a regional capacity market that is driving investment in more natural gas and fossil fuel power plants that we don’t want and we don’t need,” Dykes said at the time. “This is forcing us to take a serious look at the cost and benefits of participating in the ISO New England markets.”

Dykes and other state officials launched another verbal attack at ISO-NE earlier this month, blaming New England’s regional power grid for Connecticut’s continued high electric

Conneticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes

rates. Dykes and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said part of the reason for the state’s high electric rates is that ISO-NE failed to follow a competitive bidding process as required by law.

But Rich Sobolewski, Connecticut’s acting consumer counsel, said he has significant concerns about the state ending its relationship with ISO-NE.

“It is a huge decision,” Sobolewski said. “Until somebody actually produces a specific plan on how it would take place, it’s hard to say what the cost would be. You would really need to do a cost-benefit analysis and figure out what you would gain from the long run if you did it.”

Regional transmission grid operators such as ISO-NE were created to assure that massive regional blackouts, like the one that hit the Northeast in 1965, would not occur again.

ISO-NE officials aren’t prepared to say at this point whether they would go to court to stop Connecticut from leaving the regional transmission organization, according to Anne George, the grid operator’s vice president for external affairs and

corporate communications.

“We would have to see the impact that it (Connecticut severing ties with ISO-NE) would have on the grid and the region,” George said. “Connecticut could exist outside ISONE, but it’s a terribly complex matter.”

But in a written statement provided to Connecticut officials last month, ISO officials cautioned that the state “will need to expend significant resources” if it were to elect to extricate itself from the regional transmission organization.

“Furthermore, it has yet to be determined what Connecticut would have to do with regard to its statutes and existing contracts to achieve this end,” the statement read, in part.

George said she is hopeful Connecticut officials ultimately will decide that it is in the state’s best interest to remain part of ISO-NE. Maine officials explored a similar proposal to end its relationship with the grid operator eight years ago, she said, before deciding to remain part of the organization.

“We feel really strongly that each of the states have received significant benefits (from being part of ISO-NE),” George said.

Hearst Connecticut Media file photo