Eversource Energy

The Rocky River Power Company, formed in 1905 by J. Henry Roraback, became the Connecticut Light and Power Company in 1917. Eversource predecessor Northeast Utilities (NU) was formed on July 1, 1966, under CEO Lelan Sillin, with the merger of the Connecticut Light and Power Company (CL&P, formed in 1917), Western Massachusetts Electric Company (WMECO, formed in 1886), and the Hartford Electric Light Company (HELCO, formed in 1878) under a single parent company, creating the first new multi-state public utility holding company since the enactment of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. In 1967, Holyoke Water Power Company (HWP) (formed in 1859) joined the NU System. Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH, formed in 1926), a private company at the time, declared bankruptcy in January 1988 due to problems obtaining a license for the completed Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. and in 1992 was merged into Northeast Utilities.

In 1999, Con Edison and Northeast Utilities entered negotiations that would have created one of the largest utilities in the United States. However, Con Edison backed out of the merger in 2001 after Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal threatened lawsuits to block it.

Legislation passed in the late 1990s deregulated the electricity market in New England and required regulated utilities to divest generating stations to competitive suppliers. In 1999 the company divested all of the generating assets of WMECO and CL&P per requirements of the Massachusetts and Connecticut legislation. The company retained some of these assets by transferring them to a new subsidiary called Northeast Generation which functioned as a competitive supplier and sold the other assets entirely: WMECO's West Springfield Generating Station and several related hydroelectric and fossil fuel generating units were sold to Con Edison, while other assets (most notably the Northfield Mountain hydroelectric facility) were transferred to Northeast Generation.

In 2001, NU sold the assets and operations of its subsidiary, the Holyoke Water Power Company, to the City of Holyoke including the HWP electrical distribution system and customer base and all generation with the exception of the Mt. Tom coal-fired power plant which NU retained. The city's municipal gas and electric department assumed responsibility for the generators and absorbed the HWP distribution customer base. Between 2000 and 2002 due to state laws, NU divested WMECO, CL&P, and PSNH's nuclear generating assets which consisted of their stakes in the Seabrook, Millstone, and Vermont Yankee stations.

In November 2005, the company announced it would sell its unregulated competitive businesses, including generation and energy services. In November 2006 the company had essentially completed the divestiture of its competitive businesses.

In 2006, NU decided to sell the generating units it had earlier retained in the 1999 divestiture as competitive suppliers and shut down its competitive generation business units. The Northeast Generation assets, including Mount Tom Station and Northfield Mountain, were all sold to Energy Capital Partners. PSNH continued to operate regulated hydroelectric and fossil fuel generation assets to serve its default/basic service customers who did not choose an alternative competitive supplier.

In October 2010, Northeast Utilities announced that it would merge with NSTAR, the major electric and gas provider in Greater Boston, with the resulting company retaining the Northeast Utilities name for the next several years. After government approvals, the deal closed in April 2012.

In 2015, the company (now known as Eversource) agreed to sell all of its New Hampshire generation assets in the same manner it sold its assets in Massachusetts and Connecticut between 2000 and 2006. The sale of the New Hampshire generation fleet was approved by the state's Public Utilities Commission on November 29, 2017, and completed on January 10, 2018.

Controversy

After Eversource reported an 80 percent rise in electric transmission profits in Q2 2015, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) previously investigated the utility for having transmission rates that appear to be “unjust, unreasonable and unduly discriminatory or preferential”.

Political Connections

Also in 2015, Eversource fought the rooftop solar industry and supported anti-solar policies. In Massachusetts, they staffed the State House with lobbyists in order to end legislation promoting growth of the solar industry. During the 2015 legislative session in New Hampshire, Eversource opposed an increase to the state's solar net metering cap. New Hampshire's cap is lower than all neighboring states.

Eversource disclosed on its website politically related organization expenditures of $110,000 to the Democratic Governors Association in 2016, and payments made to trade associations that were used for lobbying or other political activities in excess of $135,000.

Rate hikes and solar charges

In Massachusetts, Attorney General Maura Healey testified in March, 2017 before the DPU urging it to deny Eversource's proposed $300 million rate increase. In her testimony, she challenged the need for Eversource's rate increase, noting NSTAR's and WMECo's high returns over the last few years. Referencing NSTAR's 2015 return of more than 13 percent, Attorney General Healey told the DPU that “[l]ast year, no state public utility commission in the country allowed a return that high.” Between 2010 and 2015, Eversource's shareholders of common stock received a cumulative total return (including quarterly dividends and the change in the market price per share) of 89 percent.

On November 30, 2017, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities on Thursday approved a much-reduced rate hike for Eversource Energy that will allow it to charge its Massachusetts electric customers tens of millions of dollars more a year. On December 20, 2017, Attorney General Maura Healey appealed the DPU ruling in the Eversource rate case, specifically the DPU's approval of a costly 10 percent shareholder return, one of the highest rates allowed by an electric distribution company regulator in the last five years.

On January 30, 2018, Massachusetts Rep. Thomas Golden and Sen. Michael Barrett held an Oversight Hearing on the DPU's decision to approve Eversource's proposal to include a demand charge as part of a monthly minimum reliability contribution on net metering customers. Rep. Golden accused the utility of purposefully making the new charges "as confusing as possible." He said, "Let me tell you something gentlemen, I'm not happy how this was rolled out. I'm not happy with the lack of information my office has received." Golden, co-chairman of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, helped write the 2016 law that permits utilities to levy a new minimum monthly charge, and he told Eversource executives they were making it "extremely, extremely difficult" for him to continue to support them in the policy.