HARTFORD, Conn. (WTIC and AP) - Officials from Eversource, scheduled to appear Thursday before a state legislative committee investigating a recent rate hike and the company’s response to Tropical Storm Isaias, are insisting it’s “just not accurate” the electricity utility was unprepared for the damage and ensuing power outages.
In a detailed 15-page letter to members of the General Assembly’s Energy and Technology Committee, the top officials said Eversource activated its emergency response plan before the storm hit Connecticut on Aug. 4 and was “thoroughly prepared” for a major event with greater impact than what the weather models predicted. But ultimately this storm, they argued, was much stronger than what anyone had predicted.
“Although we surely could have done many things better, the perception that we were not prepared is just not accurate,” the company’s top leaders, including CEO James Judge, wrote in the letter released Thursday morning.
Judge, the CEO of Connecticut’s largest electric utility, was expected to receive many pointed questions during Thursday’s hearing. Both Democratic and Republican state lawmakers are upset with the company’s response to the storm, which knocked out electricity to about 1 million people across Connecticut and left some Eversource customers without power for more than a week, as well as recent controversial rate hikes.
Thursday’s informational hearing was originally organized to address the rate increases that occurred shortly before the storm.
Connecticut regulators in July ordered Eversource, the state’s largest electric utility, to temporarily suspend a rate increase that appeared in customers’ July bills and immediately restore rates to their June 30 levels so an investigation could be conducted into whether customers were being overcharged.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority had received numerous letters and complaints from customers shocked by their larger-than-normal electric bills, some twice as much as they usually pay, which Eversource said were driven primarily by a significant increase in summer energy use and two recent delivery fee increases.