Imagine being homeless, looking for work, and NOT having a phone. I'll give you some time to work out why a phone would be an absolute top priority for someone in that position.

Please note that comments directly accusing named individuals of crimes for which they have not been convicted are potentially libelous. These have been removed and this post has been locked.

Reported. Once again, if you want to insult me, do it in person.

Why let mere facts get in the way of your opinion?

My agenda was to encourage people to make smart decisions. If you want to switch to save money, great, but you could wind up with the shit end of the stick if you're not careful to compare rates on an ongoing basis.

However, if your motivation to switch has more to do with screwing Eversource, you are not actually screwing them (again those pesky facts), and you could still wind up holding the shit end of the stick.

I generally have a pretty high level of disdain for cowards who throw out personal insults online. If you would like to insult me to my face, DM me and we can arrange the time and place. However, I have reported your post to the mods, whom I believe uphold a higher level of discourse on this sub.

You are soooo not getting the point.

Your choice of electric supplier is neutral to Eversource: It neither stands to gain nor lose money.

There is definitely money on the table right now, but there is a reason Constellation is dangling below-market prices in front of your nose: It is banking on you switching now, then forgetting to switch back when energy markets normalize and Eversource's offering returns to earth.

So, yes, switch now. But be sure to revisit your choice regularly, especially when Eversource submits its new supply rate, effective July 1.

Eversource is legally required to buy evergy on customers' behalf via a process that is designed to minimize energy market price volatility. Energy prices have been high across the board, which is why Eversource had to raise its supply rate.

Some of the alternate suppliers are offering lower rates right now in the hopes you will lock into multi-year contracts and continue paying that rate even when market rates fall below it (at which point you will likely be paying more than Eversource's offer). Although you can switch suppliers any time you want, they are banking on you not noticing when market prices go back down.

So be careful to continue to monitor rates after you switch so that you don't get stuck with a higher rate for years to come.

Here is a pretty good discussion of this: https://ctexaminer.com/2022/12/19/if-youre-thinking-about-leaping-into-the-third-party-electric-market/

Eversource doesn't actually produce electricity anymore. It just procures it on your behalf and resells it to you at cost. So it doesn't make money if you use the supply they offer and doesn't lose money if you switch.

Gotcha. UI doesn't seem to inspire quite the same level of hate, but that's probably because Eversource is much bigger. Their rates are similar, and UI is maybe a little more on the ball getting power back on after storms.

So if you are 40 minutes East of NH, you probably actually are in Eversource territory.

They get kind of a bad rap, though. Electricity is expensive right now because gas is the main fuel used by power generators in CT, and the cost of gas is through the roof. Eversource needs to work on customer service and keeping delivery costs down, but the current uproar is due to something the company doesn't control or profit from.

New Haven and all abutting towns have United Illuminating. You can choose a different genation supplier, but UI owns the lines and poles and will be your electric utility. Southern Connecticut Gas is the gas utility for the area, and the Regional Water Authority provides water service.

We sure as hell did. House caught fire, too.

Categorically not true. Hurricane Gloria took well over a week to restore. And having lots of crews on the ground is just a waste of money until you can get them to the damage sites and know where to send them.

The truck is almost certainly staffed by some bored HR manager who has been commandeered to guard the live wire so that some idiot doesn't step on it or drive over it before a crew can deenergize it. I used to work for an electric utility: Anyone capable of fogging a mirror could get pulled for downed-wire duty during a storm.

My point is that there are real limits to how quickly a utility can restore power. You could have a thousand crews lined up and pre-positioned before the storm starts, and all but a dozen or so are going to be sitting around collecting double-time-and-a-half for the first 12-24 hours while the rest clear downed trees and pull live wires off roads. You can't fix damage you can't get to.

Although major repairs get underway as soon as it is safe, most of those 1,000 crews will continue to sit in their trucks, sipping coffee and making money for the subsequent 12 to 24 hours while assessment is underway. And then you have to factor for the time it will take to actually repair the broken system.

Could Eversource manage this process better and more efficiently? Almost certainly. But eventually, you hit diminishing returns.

After Isaias, IIRC, it took Eversource eight days to get the last customers back on. They had made a bad guess as to how impactful the storm would be, undercommitted restoration resources, and performed poorly during the effort. They got justifiably creamed by PURA. They got slapped with tens of millions in fines and penalties, suffered a reduction of their allowed profitability, and got a whole shitload of unwanted (by them) new laws and regulations.

PURA and the General Assembly got a lot of headlines and tried to come across as tough on the utilities, but here's what no one is telling you: Even if Eversource had prepared correctly and executed its restoration plan perfectly, it would have had power fully restored maybe 24 hours sooner. If it had overcommitted and gone well beyond what its restoration plan specifed, it might have cut that by another day.

Either in that case, there would still have been massive numbers of customers out 48 hours after the storm, and full restoration work have taken six days. Hell, even if they could have gotten it down to five days, customers would have been showing up with pitchforks and torches, calling for heads to roll, after two days without power. And that's just not realistic.

A million dollars a mile to bury lines, not counting what homeowners will have to spend to bury their service connections. And, buried lines are vulnerable to flooding.

There is no scenario in which power can be restored instantaneously after a storm knocks thousands of trees down on power lines and cuts power to 100,000 or more people.

No matter how many crews they have on hand, and how many more they bring in, they still have to address immediate safety concerns (e.g., live wires on public roadways), conduct a damage assessment, develop a restoration plan and send out crews to each individual outage-causing event (potentially thousands of them) to do the physical work of cutting trees, erecting poles, replacing transformers and re-stringing line.

Even if Eversource planned and prepared perfectly, and had all necessary resources on hand and ready to go, complete restoration could be expected to take multiple days.

When you consider the complexity and interdependency of our air travel system, what I find surprising is that it works as often as it does. Even small problems can escalate into total clusterfucks in a matter of hours.

I'm willing to forgive the occasional fuckup. What is inexcusable is the lack of customer service and accountability when something does go wrong.

Sucks, but if you fly often enough, something like this is going to happen eventually. Could have been any airline.

Most people don't realize you can actually drive straight across the Long Island Sound. It's incredibly shallow and suitable at low tide for your average family SUV.

If you want to protest about the high supply rates right now, I suggest you look into actually who is getting the money. The owners of the big natural gas generation plants in Connecticut (PSEG, for example) must be laughing their top hats and monacles off at all the public anger at Eversource over this.

That's because Eversource is not in the supply business it's in the delivery business. That's why it charges a delivery charge. That's what Eversource does.

It's not. The poster was confused. CL&P is the same thing as Eversource.

CL&P is Eversource, or more specifically it is Eversource's regulated electric utility in Connecticut. (You'll notice that in most Eversource communications, there is fine print about CL&P "doing business as" Eversource.) Eversource also has electric utilities in MA and NH, as well as a gas utility in CT.

Bottom lime: If you are in Connecticut and get an electric bill from Eversource, it is the same entity that used to be called CL& P. You should be able to choose Constellation as your supplier.

It's a good move. But it won't "send a message" to Eversource. Eversource does not make a penny if profit from supply rates and does not lose a penny if you switch suppliers. With regard to supply, it is just a pass-through. All of that money goes to third-party generators.