Eversource 2017: There Were a Lot of Lessons Learned.

A 2017 storm that left towns in eastern Connecticut without electricity for days prompted utility monopoly Eversource to promise to improve its response to inevitable stormy weather. The Hartford Courant reported on November 15th of that year, “The utility is seeking state approval for a $336.8 million rate increase that would boost consumer electricity bills by an average of 6.79 percent. Eversource officials said the new funding would be used for infrastructure improvements to better protect the grid from storm damage and to restore outages more quickly.”

At the legislative hearing on Eversource’s inadequate response to the widespread outages, state Senator Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) told legislators, “I’m not interested … in a witch hunt.” Osten may also not have been interested in solutions. Hebron, one of the two towns in the district the five-term legislator represents, endured outages of 100% of Eversource customers from the storm. The number was at 97% Friday morning.

Read more about the 2017 legislative hearing here.

Eversource donated $105,000 to the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) in 2017 and $100,000 in 2018.