Reliable electricity is risky in Connecticut-Watvat?

Ron crushed

As a former public enterprise regulatory agency, I understand that public officials want to do everything possible to maintain water, and gasoline and electricity bills are as low as possible. All Americans know that the cost of life in this country is getting faster and faster, which has suffered severe economic pressure.

But Connecticut's utility is recently in the news. At the end of 2024, credit rating agencies reduced several public utilities for Connecticut. For example, S & P Global reduces the credit rating of Eversource from A-to BBB+. The other four public utilities in the state, including water and natural gas companies, have also been relegated by Standard Purcers. Following the lawsuit, another credit rating agency Moody's also reduced the public cause of Connecticut.

Credit downgrading is usually a response to the performance poor performance or poor business decision -making by corporate leadership. But in this case, the situation is somewhat different. This is a word from Moody's analysts involving a downgrade public cause. “The rate result is a challenging regulatory environment evidence. In this environment, the difference between the rate of requests and the final interest rate order has become quite large. There is no return to more constructive political and regulatory decisions. This Both public utilities may see further credit deterioration in the next two years. “

In other words, these credit downgradments responded to the challenging supervision environment of Connecticut's public utility supervisory agency.

What do these credit downgrade rely on water, electricity and natural gas, what does ordinary people mean? In the end, this means that the public business bills of Connecticut customers are higher. This is because the reduction of credit means that the cost of borrowing money from investors will increase, because these rating agencies are more risky in Connecticut. To make matters worse, this will hinder investment in key infrastructure and grids of Connecticut.

All of these are paying attention to me, because Connecticut's state cannot be immune to bad weather like winter storms and tropical systems, and the state should make more investment in its key infrastructure to enable the community to challenge the weather in the community. More flexible. As a former supervisory commissioner in Florida, I learned that investing in these key infrastructure projects before severe weather strikes is essential for reducing storm strikes and full recovery of service. Thanks to Florida's investment in our key infrastructure, we can spend huge storms and have strength, and restore many basic services for most customers in just a few days.

Another challenge in Connecticut is that with the increase in the state's electric demand-due to data centers, artificial intelligence and people inserted into electric cars-the state will need to invest in the power grid infrastructure to connect wind energy and solar energy, etc. New power source. These enhancement functions cost money, and now they will spend more money, because the cost of lending is only increased among the two largest power companies operating in Connecticut.

Because the borrowing costs of these power companies are rising, the public causes must improve which key infrastructure can be improved to make difficult decisions and which infrastructure to adhere to, because their current costs are too high. The less reliable power grid has made more and more people and companies in Connecticut.

Finally, Florida's power grids and public utilities are elastic today, because our regulators cooperate with the state's public institutional companies to carefully balance their needs and ensure that Florida's public business customers have fair bills and elastic services. I hope that for the customer and the state's economy, the situation in Connecticut can improve.

Ronbrisé is the former chairman of the Florida Public Service Committee and is an expert in power supervision.

This article was originally published by RealcLearenergy and provided through RealcleArware.

Related