Connecticut ratepayers are paying slightly more than $1 billion per year in public benefits charges for government mandates and programs through their electric bills, a figure that has escalated rapidly in recent years, according to testimony by both Eversource and United Illuminating before the Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee.
That testimony on April 16 was somewhat lost in reports about an exchange between Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, co-chair of the Finance Committee, and Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. Fonfara proposed a bill that would essentially remove the public benefits charge from electric bills for several years and authorize a “Green Bond” for up to $800 million annually to continue funding the programs covered under the public benefits charge.
According to legislative testimony, however, even at $800 million per year, the bond fund would not cover the entirety of what Connecticut ratepayers are currently required to pay. Vice President of Distribution Rates and Regulatory Requirements for Eversource Doug Horton testified before the committee that Eversource customers currently cover $800 million per year in public benefits, an increase from $450 million per year just five years ago.
Meanwhile, United Illuminating testified in writing that their customers currently pay roughly $250 million per year in public benefits charges, bringing the total cost to ratepayers to more than $1 billion per year.
Those benefits include government mandated energy procurement requirements for solar energy which, at this point, add up to $380 million per year for Eversource customers, eclipsing the $350 million per year the company spends maintaining and upgrading the electric grid. Horton said that while electric sales remain roughly the same as they were 24 years ago thanks to energy efficiency programs, overall spending has gone up.
“These outcomes aren’t coming for free,” Horton said. “These funds have generated meaningful results in curbing electricity consumption and producing benefits on the macro scale but to realize those benefits come at a cost and come through the public benefits charge on a customer’s energy bill.”
That includes $160 million per year in conservation load management spending, $130 million per year for net metering for solar, and an additional $70 million for “behind the meter” distribution subsidies, mostly for solar energy, Horton said.
Connecticut’s public benefits charges account for about 57 different programs that range from subsidies and rebates for electric vehicles and new technologies, to procuring energy from particular sources like the Millstone nuclear plant and paying for hardship costs and low-income discounts for customers who can’t pay their bill.
Connecticut is usually among the top two or three states in the country when it comes to the cost of electricity, driven in part by supply constraints and the public benefits charges. While lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamont often point to Connecticut being on the tail end of the national energy pipeline, Connecticut’s electricity costs are still higher than its New England neighbors.
The high cost has a cascading effect, according to Eversource officials, as those who can’t afford to pay their bill are covered by those who can, or they switch to solar for their homes, thus driving up the public benefits charges for everyone, including those who can’t afford their bill to begin with.
“We have seen in Connecticut the past-due balances of unpaid bills triple in the last five years,” said Jess Cain, vice president of customer operations and assistance programs for Eversource, who said unpaid balances grew from $100 million per year, peaked at $350 million, and has come down to $200 million since Eversource began collections again following the COVID pause.
“The public benefits charge… is regressive,” Cain said. “They don’t vary based on income.”
Both Eversource and United Illuminating were testifying in support of a bill put forward by Fonfara and backed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that would move the public benefit charges to a state bond and more closely manage the procurement of energy supply.
The public benefits charge, which was recently broken out on customer’s bills to make them more visible, became a political hot potato in the summer of 2024 after the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority allowed those benefit costs to build up over four years, citing COVID hardships.
The resulting rate increase angered the public and politicians and put PURA and its chairman Marissa Gillett under the spotlight as Connecticut’s major utility companies began to push back on the regulator for cutting their rate requests and ultimately lowering their credit rating. The blowback threatened Gillett’s reappointment to PURA, and reportedly necessitated a backroom deal between the Lamont administration and majority Democrats to make PURA a quasi-public agency and give Fonfara a seat on it.
While the bill appeared to have support among lawmakers and the utility companies, there were many opposed to the legislation, claiming it will gut the state’s push toward green energy like solar.
Mike Trahan, executive director of the Connecticut Solar & Storage Association, said the bill would essentially alter net metering to make it less attractive for homeowners to install solar panels and argued that it was a “myth” that “the tiny fraction of Connecticut property owners who use solar to make their electric power are somehow shifting costs to the other million plus electric customers who do not.”
“This will be a crushing blow to solar in this state,” Trahan said, noting that there is only 4 percent solar penetration in Connecticut, compared to 30 percent in some other states.
“People talk today that we’re trying to kill the solar industry, we’re not trying to do that whatsoever,” Fonfara said. “The reality is solar is eating away at [company] revenue and we have to have revenue supplement, if we’re going to continue down this path, more revenue that will outpace costs. That’s how we’ll reduce rates.”
Fonfara’s energy bill was passed out of the Finance Committee and was transferred to the Energy and Technology Committee where Needleman serves as co-chair alongside Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport.” Needleman was skeptical of the bill and questioned whether Eversource had written it during the public hearing, leading to a tense exchange. Needleman questioned several aspects of the bill before being cut off for time limitations.
“All I will say is I hope this bill will come to our committee where it belongs and we will have a robust conversation about this,” Needleman said. “But this is not the way to solve these problems and let me say we all care about electric rates. This is not the way to solve it, nor is it procedurally right and the senator to my right knows that.”
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Thank you for this coverage. This is a particularly upsetting example of transferring government responsibilities to individual homeowners/ratepayers. The fee should be removed from customer bills so that we know how much energy we are really consuming instead of a bill inflated with other charges that are not related to the customer’s energy use.
errr.you can look at kWh usage on your bill..get a brain…
Well done. For CT taxpayers to subsidize solar energy in an area of the country where solar is least efficient makes no sense. Worse, the less wealthy support the solar generation of the wealthy through the pubic benefit. CT needs a plan to expand natural gas for both efficiency and environmental considerations. Nuclear is probably the best long-term option but it is hard to get folks to act rationally about it.
CT electric consumers spend more on electricity as solar generation increases because the public benefit charge increases faster than the “reduction” in cost from solar.
We would have cheaper electricity if New England wasn’t held hostage to the green virtue signaling of NY, which doesn’t allow more pipelines to bring more cheap gas to NE.
Like every other green initiative, the lower income residents pay to subsidize the solar/EV fantasies of the virtue signaling wealthy.
John Fondara co chair of the finance committee. Owned his own electrical company and owes 1 million in fines to PURA. What is going on with the state of Connecticut? We should get people who can do something good for the state. There is too much going the wrong way.
Want to learn more about how that $1M in fines came to be? We got you: https://insideinvestigator.org/raw-deal-how-sen-fonfaras-company-got-1-million-in-pura-penalties/
This is a disgrace what the democratic so called leaders are doing to taxpayers in conn. they have ruined Conn. in more ways ; forcing reg tax payers to pay bills for persons who cannot pay for their bills; electric , gas , rent, food, and a host of other giveaways under a (public benefits tax)