Rising natural gas prices and increasing costs to repair and upgrade electric infrastructure are driving Maine’s eye-popping power bills, according to a new analysis from Maine’s Office of Public Advocate.
Renewable energy projects, and particularly subsidies for Maine’s now-retired community solar development program, are the smallest factor in ballooning prices, according to the agency.
Public Advocate Heather Sanborn said in an interview that the intent of the analysis was to give consumers a more complete picture of the complicated and varied forces pushing up electric bills. Her office is Maine’s public watchdog for utility consumers.
“If people are frustrated and they just want it to go down, but they’re blaming it all on one bucket of these price drivers, they’re going to continue to be frustrated,” Sanborn said. “No one policy solution and no one backward-looking blame game is going to explain where we are at right now and how to drive prices down in the future,” Sanborn added.
A typical residential bill for a Central Maine Power customer increased 72% in the last six years, to $157 per month, according to the analysis.
Almost half that increase — $30 — was due to increases in electric supply prices, largely due to surging natural gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
New England relies on natural gas power plants, but supply is constrained in the winter when fuel is directed for home heating instead. That leaves power plants to rely on burning more expensive liquified natural gas or oil to keep the lights on.
Electric distribution — poles, wires and other infrastructure that brings power to homes and businesses — was the second biggest driver, adding about $18 to bills according to the public advocate. Much of that increase came from the cost of responding to and recovering from storms, the agency said.
Transmission charges to bring power from power plants, hydro dams and other generators to local communities added about $9 to the overall cost, Sanborn’s office said.
“Stranded costs,” which include funding for some renewable energy projects, such as the controversial community solar net energy billing program, added another $9, according to the agency’s analysis.
And even if everything had stayed equal, Maine customers would have expected to pay about $27 more per month just from inflation, according to the analysis.
Sanborn said her office is working on multiple policy angles to bring down costs.
“We think it’s important to show the various different drivers in those increases, because each of those different drivers is going to require a different solution,” Sanborn added.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.