However you feel about the impact of industry consolidation on consumers, March will be a decidedly good month for hundreds of thousands of Connecticut ratepayers.
Electric and natural gas customers of United Illuminating, Connecticut Natural Gas and Southern Connecticut Gas – which were all renamed Avangrid in December as part of a $3 billion acquisition – will share $20 million in one-time billing credits this month.
Any ratepayer that was a UIL/Avangrid customer as of Dec. 31 is eligible for the credit, which began showing up on ratepayer bills as early as last week.
The credits will average between $20 and $24 for residential customers, according to Avangrid.
They are part of a laundry list of terms of an agreement negotiated by the Office of Counsel Counsel and approved by the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, which gave its final approval of the UIL-Iberdrola USA merger in December.
The PURA agreement also included $39 million in charitable donations, the creation of 150 Connecticut jobs and the cleanup of a former New Haven power station, among other promises.
The utilities also agreed to freeze distribution rates for the former UIL’s electric and gas customers, until Jan. 2017 and Jan. 2018, respectively
Those who are both UI and SCG customers will see a credit on each bill this month, Avangrid said. Those customers are concentrated in New Haven and Fairfield counties, while CNG’s service territory is concentrated in Greater Hartford.
Avangrid remains an an affiliate of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola Group. The company, which owns utility companies in Maine and New York, used to own CNG, SCG, and Massachusetts-based Berkshire Gas, but sold them to UIL Holdings in 2010. Now it owns them once more, in addition to United Illuminating.
Avangrid has a total of 3.1 million electric and gas customers in New England and New York, as well as a renewables business with 6.5 gigawatts of wind and other generation across the country.
Correction: The original version of this story inaccurately stated which state entity negotiated an agreement with the two merging companies. It was the Office of Consumer Counsel. The deal was approved by PURA.
