New Haven Independent

Wallingford, East Norwalk, South Norwalk, Norwich, Groton and Jewett City all get their power through the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative, or CMEEC. These municipalities have all had publicly owned systems for about a century, building their own infrastructure.

CMEEC provides power to just 6 percent of the state’s consumers, which is one way it has been able to provide lower rates. Whereas buying anything in bulk usually results in lower prices, that’s not always the case when buying power, said Maurice R. Scully, CMEEC’s executive director. A big buyer could push prices up on the wholesale market. Click here for a fuller explanation.

For small buyers, he said, it’s easier to be flexible and take advantage of good deals in the marketplace. Click here for details.

Under state deregulation, energy generation was split from distribution; distribution is now the sole function of UI and CL&P. They have to buy their power on the open market, but since shareholders (who now own the power plants) must also get their share of profits, prices have risen dramatically. So have rates that consumers must pay. Meanwhile, CMEEC members’ rates have increased somewhat, but nothing like the rates for the two investor-owned utilities.

New Haven engineer and environmentalist Bruce Crowder notes (as does Attorney General Richard Blumenthal) that UI, as a state-regulated entity, is allowed a 9 percent profit, but has been earning 11 percent. While Blumenthal says that warrants the state passing a windfall profits tax and making a refund to rate-payers, Crowder points out that taking an additional two percent profit does not make a 50 percent rate increase. He thinks some rate increase is legitimate — especially since the regulated utilities (the ones distributing the power, not generating it) were not allowed to raise their rates for the first several years under deregulation. Crowder has started his own blog to further explore these issues at ctenergy.blogspot.com.

Several years ago, Mayor John DeStefano had his then-mayoral aide, Julio Gonzalez, look into public power for New Haven. Gonzalez sent an email message from Texas, where he now lives, detailing what he found.

”One idea was essentially using the powers of eminent domain to acquire the transmission infrastructure in town. [But] it became apparent that there had to be significant political and community will because of the enormous cost and time the legal fight would take. We also looked at other ideas like municipalization of Harbor Station or creating more generation for the potential co-op through renewables. But those were even less feasible.”

The second main idea, Gonzalez wrote, “was generating electricity at English Station as part of a municipal utility. We looked a lot of options that would reduce the ecological impact of operation but we couldn’t find something that we felt we could persuade the community on. At that point we were concerned about having the facility be operated by someone with greener, public values instead of constantly fending off for-profit
permit seekers.”

Gonzalez is right that taking New Haven the public power route would have been difficult, if not impossible. Scully explained why: “CMEEC is owned by the municipal utilities; it’s a public corporation. Any municipal utility in the state can join if all parties agree, but CL&P and UI have franchises, so it involves condemnation of facilities; they own the poles and wires. It’s a long litigated process. Towns would need permission from UI or CL&P to leave and go municipal.”

George Adair is the utilities director for Wallingford. (He’s pictured at the top of the story standing in front of a decommissioned power plant that is being retrofitted by CMEEC as a gas-fired peaking plant, to operate about a hundred hours a year to meet power needs on the hottest days of the summer.) While stating several times, in his Canadian-accented North Carolina drawl, that he’s making no judgments about the “IOUs” (investor-owned utilities), he makes the case for public power. Click here to listen.

DeStefano’s spokesman Derek Slap said all the energy focus has been on reducing municipal spending on energy through conservation and on promoting clean energy. “We’re thinking of doing another competition,” he said, like the one New Haven won with West Hartford a few months back, to see how many residents could be signed up for green power. He said he hasn’t heard any mention of trying to create a municipally owned utility.