Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey will testify tonight at a Department of Public Utilities Public Hearing in Pittsfield to challenge a request by Eversource to raise its electricity rates next year.
Western Massachusetts Electric Company’s parent-company Eversource wants to raise customers’ electric rates by more than $36 million next year and $8 million annually for the next four years.
Eversource last evaluated its electricity rates seven years ago. It’s now on a five-year cycle due to the high speed of technological advancements that make service more efficient.
State Attorney General Maura Healey says the utility company has the right to change its rates, but not so exorbitantly. The Democrat says it could cost Western Massachusetts customers an extra $150 a year.
“My job is to make sure that utilities don't overcharge customers. This is a rate increase that is really significant, and it’s going to disproportionally affect Western Massachusetts,” Healey said.
Eversource subsidiary NSTAR also plans to raise rates. Statewide, it would mean a $96 million increase next year and $50 million annually for the next four years. About 1.4 million Eversource customers would be affected if the request goes through.
By statute, the AG’s Office of Ratepayer Advocacy represents the interest of ratepayers in proceedings before the Department of Public Utilities. Healey has been testifying across the state in recent days.
She says Western Massachusetts businesses are going to be especially hard hit.
“We need the economy to grow in the Berkshires and across Western Massachusetts. We need businesses to thrive and grow jobs and create opportunity — and I am really concerned about the impact that this rate increase is going to have. We want to make sure that any rate increase that's proposed, or that the DPU ultimately endorses, is as low as possible and that the costs are spread fairly.”
“This is money that we have already spent, already invested in our electric system to make it more reliable,” Eversource Spokeswoman Priscilla Ress says. “And I, we think our customers have really noticed the effects of the investment that we have made. We have fewer outages, the duration of those outages are shorter and that’s due in a large, in a large factor of the investments that we have made.”
Ress says Eversource has installed solar panels and other renewable energy options that will mean cost-savings for customers in the long run.
She says other high-tech, fail-safe equipment like smart switches “allows [Eversource] to take power and route it around where there is damage and get the power back on more quickly,” making customers’ quality of care a priority.
But Ress says there are challenges that make serving the region expensive.
“Western Massachusetts has large stretches of rural areas and that means it takes more poles and more wires to cover greater distances between where that electricity has to go. So, this is an expensive system to maintain, and we have also invested in a lot of high-tech smart switches and that also — the way we have to configure the system and the investments we have to make — it’s an expensive system to keep as reliable as we need it to be,” Ress said.
The Department of Public Utilities public hearing starts at 6 p.m. at the Berkshire Athanaeum in Pittsfield.
