Central Maine Power wants state regulators to OK a major long term spending plan to prepare its systems for increasingly unpredictable and damaging storms.
Electric customers will shoulder the costs, but CMP spokesperson Jon Breed said they’re already paying for extreme weather through tens of millions of dollars in
storm recovery charges
.
“What those storm costs don’t do is they don’t create reliability, grid monitorization or grid hardening value for customers,” Breed said. “Those costs are primarily labor-related.”
Instead, CMP wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade equipment, hire new employees and clear tree limbs in an effort to reduce future expenses.
The company’s upcoming plan calls to hire 400 full-time employees including 200 line workers. That should curb the need to bring in expensive contractors to help clean up and restore power after outages, Breed said.
CMP also wants to run hundreds of miles of covered wire intended to reduce power loss from tree limbs, replace old wooden poles with newer versions, expand the electric grid in southern Maine and install smart technology to restore power faster.
“What the plan seeks to do is break the cycle of extreme weather and the cost we pay every year to clean up after these extreme storms,” Breed said.
The proposal would increase CMP’s revenue by $450 million over the five years. The company could not estimate the monthly bill increase for customers but said the proposal is structured to stabilize prices.
But Maine Public Advocate Heather Sanborn said that the proposal amounted to a massive increase in electric costs at a time when Mainers are struggling to pay their bills.
The office represents consumers in utility cases.
“The size of the rate hike that CMP is asking for here is eye-popping,” Sanborn said. “While CMP claims that its plan is designed to provide ‘price stability,’ it is actually asking for greater profits and large, automatic rate increases over the next five years,” Sanborn added.
The company proposes to increase its revenues by up to $190 million in the first year, more than twice the $70 million regulators approved in its
latest distribution rate case two years ago
.
But Breed says those prices don’t reflect more than $400 million in storm costs the company was reimbursed for in recent years. The new rate proposal is meant to prevent future storm costs from spinning out of control through infrastructure and workforce investment, he added.
A warming climate is driving more
erratic and intense weather
and doing heavier damage to Maine’s aging grid.
In the last two years there have been four storms that rivaled the infamous
1998 ice storm
and Maine set a new record for electricity use during an
extreme heat wave in June
, according to CMP.
The utility says it plans to submit its full rate proposal in September. The plan will be reviewed by the Maine Public Utilities Commission.
