Consumer advocates and commissioners press Eversource on safeguards, metrics and customer impacts

Consumer advocates, commissioners and state agency representatives used the Feb. 18 hearing to press Eversource on the evidence behind its claims and to demand tighter safeguards if PURA contemplates a tracker or securitization for AMI deployment.

Claire Coleman (consumer counsel) and OCC attorneys asked for quantification of operational benefits (outage detection, truck‑roll reductions) and the extent to which AMI‑enabled savings would reduce future capital needs. Eversource said many benefits are real but that some (for example, customer adoption of time‑varying rates) are contingent on customer behavior; the company committed to filing an updated benefit‑cost analysis and to submitting truck‑roll cost breakdowns and the Massachusetts deployment plan as late exhibits by Feb. 23.

OCC objected when company counsel offered legal argument during the evidentiary portion of the hearing; the chair sustained the objection and limited legal argument to briefing. Commissioners asked for guardrails: examples included requiring a cap on tracker recovery (the company said Massachusetts used a cap in that jurisdiction), clear prudency review processes, and metrics that are objectively measurable and largely within company control if such metrics are to trigger incentives or penalties.

Eversource said it is open to transparency and reporting but opposes tying basic cost recovery to metrics that rely on customer uptake. The company recommended reporting and potential performance incentives for matters squarely under the utility’s control (network roll‑out milestones, implementation timing, and objectively verifiable operational measures) while reserving traditional prudence review for cost recovery.

PURA set briefs due March 6; the commission also requested specific late exhibits and said it will update the decision schedule after reviewing the filings.