I’ve seen a lot in my 36 years on the Electric Operations team at United Illuminating. I’ve helped manage power restoration efforts for several major storm events that knocked out power for tens of thousands of customers – from Hurricane Bob in ’91 to Tropical Storm Isaias just five years ago.
I’ve seen more minor storms than I count: bad summer thunderstorms, mid-winter snow and ice storms, Nor’easters in between.
And I’ve watched the entire UI team work to stay ahead of these challenges to limit the impacts on customers. From a completely rebuilt substation in Bridgeport and three state-of-the-art flood walls to our investments in vegetation management programs, everything we do is intended to reduce the number of power outages customers experience, and when, inevitably, they do happen, to make them as short as possible.
For years, regulators at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority were our partner in that goal. But now, for the first time in my decades-long career, PURA has come out with an inexplicable proposal in UI’s current rate case. They propose cutting UI’s overall storm budget in half and our minor storm budget by an unbelievable 85 percent, which would mean longer outages for the customers whose interests they say they want to protect.
No matter how big a storm is, power restoration efforts cost money – and the more quickly we restore, the more money it costs. That’s why our Emergency Response Plan, or ERP, which PURA approves annually, seeks to balance outage length with cost considerations by providing expected timelines for full restoration efforts based on outage numbers. If, for instance, we experience 105,000 outages, our ERP designates it would take five to six days for us to complete restoration.
But five years ago, the Connecticut legislature disregarded the PURA-approved ERP and established new, inflexible rules with a four-day time limit on customers’ power outages, no matter the size or scale of the storm.
Even despite these rules, PURA, in its latest rate case proposal, cut our storm response down to the quick. For minor storms like thunderstorms, snowstorms, and Nor’easters, they cut our three-year budget of $2.9 million down to a jaw-dropping $389,000.
With figures like that, we could restore customers normally through, say, mid-February. Then what? Is PURA ready for a world in which we not only cut any external resources, but also that we eliminate any overtime for our own crews? Is PURA suggesting that when a storm hits on the weekend, we start restoration efforts during normal business hours on Monday morning? That’s what this level of funding provides.
There’s a gaping chasm between a legislature that tells utilities, “All customers must be restored in less than four days, or you’re gonna pay for it,” while the regulator tells utilities, “You’re going to restore customers with 15 percent of the money you need.”
My question is, how are we supposed to meet PURA’s and the legislature’s increasingly steep expectations on storm restoration performance with less than a shoestring budget?
I fear the answer is, it simply can’t be done. And in the end, it’s customers who will feel the pain. Longer, more frustrating power outages that are just as frustrating to customers as they are to our union men and women: surely PURA wouldn’t argue that’s in the best interest of anyone whose interests they are charged to consider?
There’s still time for this mind-boggling proposal to be amended. For the sake of our employees, our customers, and the whole state, I hope PURA doesn’t carry it through. If they do, regulators will actually stand in the way of us doing what we do best: restoring customers safely and quickly following any storm event.
In my 36 years at UI, I’ve seen a lot, but I never thought I’d see that day.
Chuck Eves is the vice president of Electric Operations at United Illuminating (UI).
https://www.courant.com/2025/10/17/opinion-puras-proposed-storm-cuts-would-hurt-ct-customers-most/
