CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly totaled the PURA reduction as $57 million.
Connecticut utility regulators Monday preliminarily lowered Connecticut Light & Power’s 2011 and 2012 storm recovery costs by $49 million, while deferring any penalty on CL&P for its deficient response to the outages until its next rate case.
CL&P had asked for $414 million from ratepayers to recover its preparation and restoration costs from five storms in 2011 and 2012, including Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011, the October 2011 nor’easter, and Superstorm Sandy in October 2012.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, in its draft decision issued Monday, said CL&P could recover $365 million from those storms.
The draft decision is not final, and the utility can argue for more recovery costs. The final ruling is expected Feb. 19.
“We are still reviewing PURA’s draft decision on our storm costs,” CL&P spokeswoman Tricia Taskey Modifica said. “We continue to build on the improvements we’ve made to storm response and emergency preparedness over the past two years and are proud of the accomplishments of our employees.”
PURA said CL&P shouldn’t get its full $414 million initial request because $49 million of those costs were already included in CL&P’s rates.
CL&P actually incurred more than $462 million in costs from the five storms, but did not seek $40 million of that money, as part of its agreement with the state to approve the merger between its parent Northeast Utilities and Boston utility parent NStar. The utility also had a $8.3 million balance in its storm reserve fund, so it didn’t ask for that money.
PURA deferred ruling on other CL&P matters until the utilities’ next rate case, which is expected to be filed sometime this year.
That includes whether CL&P will be fined up to $143 million for its response to the outages caused by Irene and the 2011 nor’easter.
In investigating CL&P’s 2011 response, PURA found the utility had acted in an inadequate and deficient matter. The investigation said CL&P should be penalized by not being able to recover some of its costs through rates but gave the utility an option to avoid a penalty if CL&P could prove its storm preparation and response had improved.
While PURA never put a number on the size of the penalty, Attorney General George Jepsen said CL&P should face up to a $143 million dollar fine – equal to half of its costs for Irene and the 2011 nor’easter.
