(New Britain, CT) – Consumer Counsel Claire Coleman released the following statement regarding the issuance of a draft decision by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority rejecting United Illuminating’s rate increase application.
“While my team and I are conducting a thorough review of PURA’s preliminary decision, we are pleased to see clear major victories for ratepayers that will shield United Illuminating customers from paying tens of millions of dollars in unjust and unreasonable increased rates,” said Consumer Counsel Coleman. “We fought hard to protect ratepayers from substantial unjustified company costs, incomplete and poorly developed plans, and proposed capital expenditures from which they receive no direct benefit, and PURA agreed with many of our key recommendations.”
“PURA appropriately reduced UI’s profits (called ‘return on equity’ in utility regulation) given UI’s performance deficiencies. Reducing UI’s profits decreases the rates customers pay for electric service. These profits have historically been inflated across the utility sector, so this appropriate reduction is an important victory for UI customers.”
“In light of the performance based regulatory model that is currently under development in Connecticut, I am also pleased to see that the OCC’s recommendation of a single year rather than a multi-year rate plan was adopted in the draft decision. This will avoid locking in rates under an outdated regime and allow regulators a chance to evaluate the next rate plan in accordance with the performance-based regulatory model. PURA’s draft decision agreed with OCC’s argument that a single-year rate plan will make it possible to implement performance-based ratemaking with UI on the fastest possible schedule. OCC will continue to push further regulatory reform to provide more avenues for keeping utility costs in check.”
The Office of Consumer Counsel’s initial brief can be found here and reply brief here.
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