Conn. consumers search for ways to reduce electric bills
Even before the pandemic arrived, some Connecticut consumers were aggressively exploring ways to keep their electric bills down.
“After consistent $600-$700 (a month) summer electric bills for a 2,000-square-foot house without a pool, we looked into everything,” said Stef SternCarlson of Cheshire. “We had an energy audit, we didn’t qualify for solar (too many trees), and we even considered moving back to Washington state, where cost-of-living expenses are about 24 percent less.”
Stern-Carlson and her family aren’t giving up just yet. They recently installed a new furnace and Stern-Carlson said she is hoping that because it is more efficient, it will reduce their electric bill somewhat.
“No one can guarantee it will help, but we’re crossing our fingers,” she said. “Otherwise, we can’t afford to stay in Connecticut.”
Connecticut has never been a low-cost state when it comes to consumers’ electric bills, but a recent rate hike proposal before state utility regulators seems to have rekindled public ire about how much we pay to keep the lights on.
For decades, the state has been at or near the top of the list of states with the highest electric rates. A recent study from the real estate web site Ownerly reported that Connecticut has the nation’s second highest electric rates, trailing only Hawaii.
The average residential electric bill in Connecticut is $160.52, according to the study, an average increase of 9.9 percent when comparing AprilDecember 2020 compared to the same months in 2019.
When broken out by the state’s two largest electric utilities, Eversource Energy customers saw their monthly bills jump by 11.45 percent, while their counterparts with The United Illuminating Co. saw a 12.92 percent increase, according to the study.
Part of the reason for the increase is attributable to people working from home during the pandemic. Eversource saw a power usage surge of 15 percent while United Illuminating Co. saw an increase of 17 percent.
Ways to reduce your electric bill
Joel Gordes, a West Hartford-based energy consultant, said that consumers can take charge of their monthly electric bills in a few small steps. Turning off lights when you aren’t in a room and using LED light bulbs is a good start, along with installing more insulation in your home.
“There is energy efficiency money (at the state level) that can take care of a large share of the costs associated with changing out your lights,” Gordes said.
Other methods, like installing a photo voltaic solar array on your roof, are larger undertakings with greater upfront costs, but could pay off over time. Gordes said he installed solar panels five years ago. “Most months we don’t have an electric bill,” he said.
If your solar array produces more electricity than you use in a given period, the excess energy is delivered back onto the grid, giving you a credit on your bill from your local utility. In months when a solar array doesn’t produce enough electricity for your needs, you can tap into those credits to reduce the costs associated with the electricity from your provider.
Some homeowners are now installing batteries to store some of the electricity their solar arrays produce, Gordes said.
Ken Allen of Cheshire and his wife Peggy are in the process of having a pair of 10 kilowatt batteries in stalled at their home. The two batteries, Ken Allen said, are the size of two very large trunks, with each unit costing $10,000.
Allen said he and his wife have had a solar array at their home for eight years. “It has paid for itself,” he said.
The couple installed batteries after mounting frustration with power losses; their solar panels can still produce energy, but there is no way to make use of it since the system is tied into the distribution grid.
Once the battery system is up and running, Ken Allen said they will be able to power their home in the aftermath of a power outage by using the electricity stored in the batteries. And on sunny days, when the rest of the neighborhood is without power, their solar panels will replenish the electricity being drawn from the batteries.
“Even if there is no sun, the company that sold them (the batteries) to us said that depending on how much electricity you use, you will have enough power to last from one to four days,” Ken Allen said.
Rate hikes by electric utilities drive customer traffic to solar array installers like Aegis Solar in Branford, according to company owner Chris Lenda.
“People are getting kicked in their wallets right now, and that has really piqued an interest in the business,” Lenda said. “The goal when installing a photo voltaic array is to design it so that produces 100 percent of your annual energy usage. And in many cases we are able to do that.”
As for his own home, Lenda said his monthly electric bill is typically under $10 per month. “Essentially, what I’m paying for is renting the electric meter,” he said.
Lenda said that while local solar array installers saw their businesses take a hit during the early days of the pandemic, he’s gotten busier in recent months. “Demand is just as strong or stronger than before,” he said.
Restarting the debate
At the beginning of March, Eversource Energy filed a request with the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority in an attempt to revisit a rate increase that regulators had approved last summer, then suspended efforts amid public outcry over the size of increases to customer electric bills during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest filing does not reflect costs the company incurred making repairs to its distribution network following Tropical Storm Isaias, which hit the state last summer.
Jim Judge, Eversource’s chief executive officer, told energy industry analysts last month that company officials would seek to recover an additional $230 million in costs incurred as a result of the storm.
Isaias was one of the largest power outage events in the state's modern history. Thousands of residents remained without power more than a week after the storm hit and countless roads were blocked by damaged trees and power lines. Nearly 80 percent of those costs are attributed to bringing in mutual aid crews, hiring independent contractors and vegetation management crews and conducting environmental cleanup.
The Eversource filing has resulted in renewed frustration among the utility's ratepayers and in public rebukes by elected officials. Last week, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to PURA urging regulators to freeze the electric rates Eversource charges its customers at current levels.
“Such flagrantly failed service should not be rewarded by forcing ratepayers to pay more money to a company already reaping substantial profits and highly compensating its executives,” Blumenthal said in his letter. “For consumers who have suffered deeply from Eversource’s utility malpractice, raising rates piles on insult and injury.”
A week after Eversource announced its latest filing, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong criticized the utility company; at the same time, he announced a $46.5 million plan negotiated by state officials with United Illuminating to decrease and stabilize electric rates into 2023.
“It makes such a difference to have corporate leadership firmly committed to Connecticut,” Tong said of UI officials. “Eversource, the ball is in your court now.”
Mitch Gross, an Eversource spokesman, said officials at the utility “understand the impact the pandemic has had on customers, which is why we’ve proposed spreading the costs over time, relieving customers of the burden of paying the costs all at once — lessening the impacts to customer bills.”
“The expenses outlined in our filing represent actual costs that were incurred to safely run the electric system and provide reliable service to Connecticut customers,” Gross said.
Tong isn’t backing down. On Friday, he said Connecticut residents “pay far too much for our energy.
“Families are right to be mad,” Tong said. “Scrutinizing every rate request and holding utilities accountable for the service they provide and every penny they charge is a core function of my office.”