Gillett nudges PURA into spotlight as challenges mount

Photo | EHYUN KIM :: CTMIRROR.ORG Marissa Gillett is the chairperson of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, which regulates the state utilities industry.

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By Liese Klein

After a very busy 2020, Marissa P. Gillett is in high demand at the school where her husband works as a teacher.

“He said people didn’t know what I did before August, but now they want me to talk to their classes about batteries and things. Maybe I’ve become a celebrity at this,” Gillett said with a rueful laugh.

Celebrity is hardly what you’d associate with the chairperson of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), a staid state agency normally associated with dense reports and polysyllabic pronouncements.

Most utility regulators nationwide stay under the radar and rarely interact with the media. Gillett, by contrast, has kept PURA in the spotlight.

“When there's a void, when consumers are not getting access to information in a transparent or timely fashion, it's incumbent on me to fill that void,” Gillett said.

In the past year, Gillett has given PURA a new profile as she seeks to both modernize the state’s electric grid and hold utilities accountable for storm preparedness and pandemic policies.

On the grid-modernization front, Gillett cited progress that has translated into concrete proposals and legislation to advance electric cars and alternative energy.

“I’m proud that the agency still made significant progress on the grid-modernization docket, even in light of having those two major disruptive events this year that created a whole host of work that is still ongoing,” Gillett said.

Check out our other 2020 5 We Watched Profiles.

Ah, those two disruptive events. First came the pandemic, shuttering businesses and throwing thousands of residents out of work. Utility bills in record numbers went unpaid for months.

PURA acted in early March, ordering a halt to utility shut-offs during the COVID-19 emergency. The agency has since wrangled with companies including Eversource on extensions to the moratorium and who would pay the bill for pandemic delinquencies — ratepayers or the utilities themselves.

“COVID has been both an operational challenge and just across-the-board challenge for all our water, gas and electric utilities,” Gillett said. “Making sure that ratepayers aren't harmed when we emerge from the pandemic — it’s been a tightrope.”

Then came Tropical Storm Isaias, which blasted through the state on Aug. 4, leaving more than 720,000 people without power in its immediate aftermath. Outages stretched to more than a week in some areas and Eversource was accused of underestimating the storm. Within days, Gov. Ned Lamont announced an investigation by PURA of the utility.

Facing the potential of millions in fines, Eversource has defended its response, blaming inadequate weather forecasting.

The debate comes to a head later this month, when PURA hosts the first of two evidentiary hearings on the storm response.

“There's quite a lot at stake for the utilities, in addition to ratepayers,” Gillett said. “People are going to want to know why this happened, why they’ve invested so many millions of dollars and we're still facing outages.”

The agency is scheduled to make a decision on the case in April, with a penalty phase if warranted later in 2021 to decide on the amount of any fines.

The storm and its aftermath have also impacted PURA’s ability to focus on grid modernization — which can help mitigate the impact of disasters like Isaias in the long term as the electrical infrastructure is improved.

“That’s taken a lot of our bandwidth, which is unfortunate because that takes away from our grid-modernization work, which is where we were focused on making sure that doesn’t happen in the future,” Gillett said. “It's looking backward while also trying to look forward.”

Another pressing issue is the bankruptcy of Frontier Communications, the state’s largest provider of landline telephone service as well as a major owner of utility poles. PURA is scheduled to issue a draft decision in mid-January on Frontier’s change of control application, which would cede ownership to four investment firms.

PURA also announced in early December that it would overhaul the process by which it approves certain utility rate adjustments every six months to avoid swings in monthly electric bills.

For 2021, Gillett is looking forward to translating the agency’s grid-modernization work into performance-based incentives to grow the state’s electric-car capacity. She’s also focused on ramping up PURA’s communications efforts to make sure that customers see the big picture on the costly transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy.

“It’s very important to me that we deliver on that ambitious portfolio,” Gillett said. “People have to understand what's going on and what they're being charged for because it is a lot of money each month.”

Check out our other 2020 5 We Watched Profiles.