BOSTON (Legal Newsline) — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has announced New Hampshire Transmission (NHT) has agreed to a $6.8 million settlement after allegations of improperly including millions of dollars of development costs in its transmission rates.
Healey’s office first filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in April 2015. The complaint argued New England consumers should not have to pay for the development of NHT’s proposed SeaLink transmission project. The project was never selected to be built, yet NHT collected $9.9 million in expenses from ratepayers for it.
“As the state’s ratepayer advocate, it is my job to ensure that the millions of dollars improperly charged to ratepayers gets returned to them,” Healey said. “We need to keep working with consumer advocates and our state, local and federal partners so that costs for electricity transmission are fair, reasonable and transparent.”
In the settlement, NHT will refund $6.5 million to consumers. $3.2 million of that will go to ratepayers in Massachusetts. The other New England states will receive the remaining 53 percent of the balance.
Assistant attorneys general Christina Belew and Donald Boecke handled the case with help from analyst Fred Plett. All are employees of Healey’s energy and telecommunications department.