Connecticut Reddit Users Up in Arms Over Eversource Rates

On July 30th, 2024 NBC CT published a story about Connecticut residents who are frustrated with Eversource utility rates. They quoted one person as saying “This is gonna put a lot of people out of their homes and a lot of businesses out of business.”

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On August 1, 2024 a Connecticut Reddit user called OldBowDude shared a portion of a release from Connecticut's Senate Democrats that read in part:

While many Americans saw their energy bills go up substantially in the past year, investor-owned electric and gas utilities and the country’s largest publicly owned utility paid their CEOs over $647 million in 2023, an increase of 9 percent over 2022, an analysis by the Energy and Policy Institute has found. Eversource’s CEO, Joseph Nolan, was the 9th highest paid utility CEO in 2023, making $18,885,577. During this time, while utility CEOs raked in millions of dollars, Eversource, along with other utility companies, disconnected thousands of customers for being unable to pay their monthly bills. In 2023, Eversource disconnected 49,170 customers.

The NBC quote was tame compared to some of what has been shared to the same Connecticut Reddit page recently. Here are some of the responses to the OldBowDude post:

AbuJimTommy: His ability to get any increase through PURA no matter how ludicrous and extract massive revenues from the poors makes him worth every penny. /s

phuct54: Vampires sucking our life's blood.

blakeusa25: Imagine making 1m a month and living your best life while screwing over everyone in the state.

Ryan_e3p: What's the alternative? We can push for reps to make CT utilities a public co-op/municipal function. Make them owned by the public, not investors. What other options are there? PURA and the politicians who are politically funded by Eversource clearly aren't doing much in the best interests of the people here.

BackPacker7385: Come on, this is insane, right?

Autotoan: Beyond outrageous. Let them eat cake they said.

mikepol70: I was talking about someone one day with this old timer and I said where did so and so get all his money and he said screwing people how do you think most of the rich get there money I'll always remember what he said

Another CT Reddit user name PaulWalkerCGIFace shared a post about writing Senator Blumenthal about the Eversource rates. He said:

I just wrote Senator Blumenthal about Eversource, the rest of the state needs to get organized and do the same if we want any hope of lowering our bill

Afterwards there were about 10 people who told PaulWalkerCGIFace that Senator Blumenthal is a U.S. Senator who is tasked with representing the state in Federal matters. Once people got tired of explaining how they know everything, other comments started rolling in, here are just a few.

Petty Witch: I think we need a major paper to pick this up, like the New York Times. Dive into the average costs for households… it’s surreal at this point. Enough picking on the electric grid of Texas, this deserves national attention and mockery, what has happened in CT.

CTrandomdude: Waste of time. It is our state representatives that have the power. Now in my opinion they have been bought off by eversource. Eversource hires their family members and at times retiring politicians to keep influence. They get their friends to be appointed to the Purra board as insurance. It’s all a big fix and it’s right in front of our faces.

We discussed the issue on the Friday (8/2/24) edition of the I-95 Morning Show and these were some of the comments we received:

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Lisa - New Fairfield: Hi guys! My Eversource bill was $408 last month and it’s $570 this month. No change in activity in our three bedroom cape.

The Bagelman - Brookfield: Guys this is marc from the bagelman my brookfield location bill went from 3700 to 5100 a month this is nuts.

Stizzy - Middlebury: Eversource really screwed people this time. If you look at your bill, they actually decreased the generation rates. The increase came in what they call the public benefits portion of the bill. They did this specifically to screw over the people who go to third-party suppliers extra hard. This used to be the only way we could fight back against their high rates and now they are punishing us for going to a third-party supplier.

Eversource recently commented on the public backlash in an August 1, 2024 CT Insider article. Sarah Wall Fliotsos, a UI spokesperson told CT Insider:

UI customers experienced an increase in the public benefits charge and a decrease in the supply charge that nearly equaled each other, meaning UI customers experienced little change in their bills between the first and second half of the year. We encourage customers impacted by the increase in the Public Benefits Charge to provide feedback to the legislators who advocated for the programs driving them.

Fliotsos added the company is aware of the "small amount of social media commentary related to their electric bill costs."

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