A federal appeals court sided with ISO New England Inc. in a case brought by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who accused the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of allowing the Holyoke, Mass.-based organization to overpay its executives.
ISO New England oversees the wholesale power markets in Connecticut and other states in the region. In a 2009 filing with FERC, ISO New England disclosed nearly $1 million in compensation for its president, Gordon van Welie.
In its ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals stated that although Connecticut”™s concerns “are not without some basis,” FERC was under no legal requirement to hold an evidentiary hearing on compensation as demanded by the state.
Transmission Developers
Transmission Developers Inc. dropped Connecticut from its plans to install an underwater cable to furnish the metropolitan New York City area with renewable power from Canada.
With backing from the Blackstone Group, Toronto-based TDI plans to run an underwater cable down the Hudson River. Its original plan called for looping additional cable up Long Island Sound to Bridgeport, but the company stated lack of interest by Connecticut led it to abandon the final leg.
CL&P
The Connecticut Light & Power Co. division of Northeast Utilities ranked last in the nation on a J.D. Power and Associates survey of residential electricity customer satisfaction.
CL&P is the dominant utility in Fairfield County and Connecticut; the United Illuminating Co. subsidiary of UIL Corp. provides service in the Bridgeport area, and similarly fared poorly ranking among the bottom half-dozen of some 120 utilities nationally.
Westlake Village, Calif.-based J.D. Power based calculated ratings from some 85,000 online interviews conducted between July 2009 and this past May. The study measures customer satisfaction in six areas: power quality and reliability; price; billing and payment; corporate citizenship; communications; and customer service.
CL&P improved on last year”™s ranking, but not enough to avoid plummeting to the bottom of the rankings where it displaced the Long Island Power Authority among major utilities in the East.
For the third straight year, Central Maine Power led all large utilities in the East, while Vancouver, Wash.-based Clark Public Utilities captured the overall top ranking nationally.
Connecticut trails only Hawaii for electric rates.
GM, GE
Connecticut is among the first half-dozen states where General Motors Corp. will begin selling the Chevy Volt electric car this November.
The car is designed to drive 40 miles on battery power before switching over to a small gas engine for longer distances.
Separately, General Electric Co. unveiled its GE WattStation electric vehicle charger, which Fairfield-based GE stated significantly decreases the time needed for vehicle charging and which allows utility companies to manage the impact of electric vehicle charging on the grid
OPTIMUM ONLINE
Customers of Cablevision Systems Corp.”™s Optimum Online service were unable to access email Thursday and Friday, with the company reportedly blaming unspecified technical issues that it was still working to fix as of midday Friday.
As of March, Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision had more than 2.6 million customers for its high-speed Internet service; the company does not publish statistics on how many of those customers use Optimum as their primary email address for home or work.
