The electric company is going to inherently be a monopoly. It doesn’t make economic sense to build two or more grids for separate companies. It’s like this in every state. That part will not change.

Now having said that, there are better ways to make a monopoly work. One is an electric co-op like they have in many rural areas. They don’t make a profit and their customers are actually members that collectively own the company. They’re accountable to these members, not Wall Street.

I see a lot of people advocating for municipal systems like in Groton, Norwich, and South Norwalk. I kind of disagree with this one as I think it’d be too fragmented to really work. I’m a fan of the co-op model. Bottom line get these companies owned by Wall Street out of essential services!

You can use a diifferent company for generation, so yes , there are options. Eversource simply buys generation as a pass through cost to the rate payer. They don't generate their own power.

>Eversource simply buys generation as a pass through cost to the rate payer. They don't generate their own power.

And that's why they should change their name to Neversource. It should be considered false advertising.

It's a state law. They made Eversource sell their power plants. it was part of Republican led utility de- regulation in late 90s. It never worked.

Imagine how it’s going to be when our cars and all our stoves and all our furnaces run on electricity.

They are allowed to rip us off because they have bought and paid for our politicians and PURA. They hand out jobs to their family members and to those retiring from office as payback. They have been doing this for years and it has paid off. They get generous rate increases and they coordinate occasional high requests allowing the state to act all upset and deny it or agree to the lower one which was the plan all along.

This is not likely to change.

Oh God. Forgot about electric cars

Yeah I’m all for the environment but life is gonna be like a sci fi movie once all our energy comes from one place.

I feel like widespread solar adoption also needs to come with the push towards electric cars and heat pumps.

The problem with solar is that even if you and every other customer were to produce 99%of the electricity you use you would still need to be connected to the grid and that connection would just be more expensive because the grid costs money to maintain.

I heard someone say to never forget that electric cars are here to save the auto industry, not the environment.

I hate eversource as much as the next person, but I’ve never lived anywhere (5 states) where you could choose and utility provider.

With the way the distribution grid is built in CT (redundancy provided by connecting circuits and substations together) and how densely populated the state is, it'd be impossible and impractical to divide it up at the municipal/county/regional level.

Correct. A statewide co-op would be a better answer. Or leave things the way they are and give the PUC some actual teeth to enforce things.

That and the delivery is a big percentage of the bill. I am having solar installed still worth it but there is no way to het off Eversources teat

Theyre actually the cheapest provider right now

It’s not that simple. PURA needs additional powers to make a real difference. They are bound by the limits of their authority, which is not as much as it appears from the outside. The state legislature needs to directly address this issue. The power companies know this and they spend money making sure there is not a majority in the state senate supporting utility reform.

It’s frustrating but the issue is more complex and that’s partly why it hasn’t been solved yet.