Many questions about future of utilities

“I’m really committed to going back to ground zero on this. I think we really need to look at how we got here.”

state Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, Energy and Technology Committee co-chair

Eversource and United Illuminating, which together provide power to the vast majority of Connecticut, are private companies with public responsibilities. They have geographic monopolies in providing an essential public service, and the failure to respond adequately to Tropical Storm Isaias, which left parts of the state without power for a week or more, has inspired outrage.

Lawmakers are prepared to act on that outrage, and have called Jim Judge, the Eversource chairman, to appear before the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee this month. But legislators need to do more than fulminate. They need to act to ensure such an outcome isn’t repeated.

Eversource, which provides power to most of Connecticut as well as other New England states, could be due for a reckoning. But much will depend on how well-prepared lawmakers are when they craft a legislative fix, and how far they are willing to go to re-create a system that, to outside observers, doesn’t seem to make much sense.

A basic problem is communication. It doesn’t work for leaders to duck responsibility in the event of a crisis, as Judge has been accused of doing. People can understand that a serious situation takes time to rectify, but they want to understand that those responsible are taking action and are accountable. A reporting system that can’t handle the volume of calls that comes in following a tropical storm is no good to anyone, nor is an online set-up that doesn’t provide estimates for how long power will be out until days later.

But it goes deeper than that. In a state with some of the highest electric rates in the nation, some in Hartford are looking at wholesale changes.

“I’m really committed to going back to ground zero on this,” Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, the committee cochair, said. “I think we really need to look at how we got here.”

That means understanding how Connecticut has a system where Eversource’s CEO can be paid $19.8 million and the company can see a swelling stock price even as it instituted a rate hike and then drastically underestimated the pain that Isaias would bring. There are contradictions built into the deregulated power delivery system in Connecticut that even those charged with overseeing it are struggling to understand.

At the same time, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2, has urged regulators to examine the performance of publicly owned utilities in his district, which he says consistently perform better in emergencies than their for-profit counterparts. “In all the recent weather disasters of the past decade, municipal providers consistently outperform Eversource and UI in power restoration and service,” Courtney wrote in a letter to Marissa Gillett, chairman of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority.

Lawmakers tasked with responding to Isaias will understandably vent some frustration at Eversource and UI. They will raise necessary questions about staffing levels, penalties and liabilities. But at some point, the record becomes clear. Our current system of regulating electric utilities did not prevent a crisis, and the storm in question was nowhere near a worst-case scenario.

The Legislature needs to think seriously about whether this is a system that can be allowed to survive.