Customers wonÂ’t pay blackout costs
The accord offered Islanders an average 14 per cent drop in their electricity bills, but there is also a provision to pass extra costs on to customers if there's a catastrophic event.
"The outages weren't significant enough to warrant this," said vice-president of corporate planning and energy supply John Gaudet.
"The power was restored in some cases in 20 minutes to customers. And the amount of generation that was required was relatively small. We do build in a certain amount of provisional fuel, if you will, to accommodate such circumstances. So, so far so good."
Maritime Electric did incur some extra costs during the blackout, burning fuel in on-Island generators, which is more expensive than the imported electricity it relies on most of the time.
Gaudet said costs would have to go much higher for it to be considered a catastrophic event. Maritime Electric has budgeted for a certain number of outages under the accord.
Related News
CT leads New England charge to overhaul electricity market structure
HARTFORD - Weeks after initiating a broad overhaul of utility regulation within its borders, Connecticut has recruited four New England states to rework the regional grid that is overseen by ISO New England, the independent system operator charged with ensuring a reliable supply of electricity from power plants.
In a written statement Thursday morning, Gov. Ned Lamont said the current structure “has actively hindered” states’ efforts to phase out polluting power plants in favor of renewable sources like wind turbines and solar panels, while increasing costs “to fix market design failures” in his words. Lamont’s energy policy chief Katie Dykes has…
