New Haven business energy: UI, Yale and SWCT

Who supplies a New Haven address

The distribution company for a New Haven address is United Illuminating, an Avangrid company, and that assignment follows the service address rather than anything the occupant decides. United Illuminating is the second of Connecticut's two investor-owned electric distribution companies, and PURA regulates both its distribution rates and the supplier market that sells into its territory; PURA also publishes the state's municipal electric distribution companies and lists six: Groton Utilities, Bozrah Light and Power, the Jewett City department of public utilities, Norwich Public Utilities, South Norwalk Electric and Water, and Wallingford's electric division. A municipal system is one of the circumstances in which no retail choice exists at all, so an address inside one of those six has no supplier decision to make. New Haven is not among them, which is why the supplier market described here is open to a business in this city. the Authority's own rate-case page records United Illuminating's most recent distribution case and its subsequent dockets, so the company's delivery charges are a matter of public record rather than negotiation. Gas is separate and belongs to a different company: PURA's account of how gas moves through Connecticut places Southern Connecticut Gas, also an Avangrid subsidiary, in the greater New Haven area, alongside Connecticut Natural Gas in the greater Hartford area and Greenwich and Yankee Gas, trading as Eversource Energy, in the state's remaining gas territories. Neither company can be replaced, and what a competitive supplier sells against that backdrop is the generation supply only, with the wires, the meter and the delivery charges staying where they are. The default a New Haven account sits on unless it acts is Standard Service, the utility's procured supply.

• United Illuminating, an Avangrid company, is the electric distribution company for New Haven.
• United Illuminating is one of Connecticut's two investor-owned electric distribution companies, and PURA regulates both its distribution rates and its supplier market.
• Southern Connecticut Gas, an Avangrid subsidiary, is the gas distribution company for the greater New Haven area.
• The distribution company cannot be replaced; competitive supply is generation supply only.
• Standard Service, the utility's procured supply, is the default for an account that does not act.
• PURA lists six municipal electric distribution companies in Connecticut and New Haven is not one of them, so retail supply is available here.

Inside the Southwest Connecticut load area

New Haven sits inside a subregion that Connecticut regulators and the regional grid operator treat separately, and the reason matters to any business here. Eversource's forecast of loads and resources, filed with the Connecticut Siting Council, describes the Southwest Connecticut area as the largest load area in the state: fifty-four towns, including all of Avangrid's service territory, Wallingford Electric, and some of the CMEEC service territory, covering the towns essentially west of Interstate 91 and south of Interstate 84 and accounting for approximately half of Connecticut's peak electric load. Because United Illuminating is Avangrid's electric company, the whole of its territory is inside that area, New Haven included. ISO New England's own long-range transmission study explains the physical constraint in unusually plain terms: the subregion is a densely populated urban area in a corner of the New England system with high load density and little space for overhead line corridors, and only two 345 kV paths connect it to the rest of New England, one from Long Mountain in New Milford and one from Beseck in Wallingford. The loss of one or both of those paths can push flows onto the underlying 115 kV system, where transformers suffered thermal overloads as studied load increased, and ISO-NE lists the area as a high-likelihood concern. What that means commercially is that congestion and capacity are structural features of the zone a New Haven business buys into, not something a supplier invents, which is why zone and capacity treatment belongs in the questions a buyer asks rather than in the footnote of an offer.

• The Southwest Connecticut area comprises fifty-four towns, essentially west of Interstate 91 and south of Interstate 84.
• It includes all of Avangrid's service territory, so the whole of United Illuminating's territory is inside it, along with Wallingford Electric and part of CMEEC.
• It accounts for approximately half of Connecticut's peak electric load demand.
• ISO-NE identifies the subregion as a high-likelihood concern, with only two 345 kV paths connecting it to the rest of New England: one from Long Mountain in New Milford, one from Beseck in Wallingford.
• Loss of one or both paths can push flows onto the 115 kV system, where transformers suffered thermal overloads as studied load rose.

Yale runs its own generation, and it is not a utility

The largest single block of load in the city is supplied in part from private plants rather than from the distribution system, and the permitting record is the clearest account of it. Yale University's Central Power Plant at 120 Tower Parkway is a cogeneration facility: the university describes it as primarily fueled by natural gas, providing electricity, steam heat and chilled water to buildings on Yale's main campus including the Science Hill area, with two 7.9-megawatt combustion turbines installed in 2016 and three 1.5-megawatt peaking and emergency diesel generators. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection's own Title V air permit for the plant describes the equipment the same way, naming a 7.9-megawatt Solar Taurus 70 gas turbine paired with a heat recovery steam generator capable of producing approximately 95,000 pounds an hour of 250 psig saturated steam to supply the Central and Science campus, and notes the plant's ability to burn an ultra-low-sulfur distillate as an alternative. The University's own infrastructure account adds the second plant and the scale: the Sterling Power Plant at 309 Congress Avenue provides electricity, steam and chilled water to Yale's medical campus and to Yale New Haven Hospital, with cogeneration added in 2012, and the Central plant is described as providing up to fifty percent of Yale's campus shares of electricity, steam heat and chilled water. These are not PURA-regulated utilities. They are private generation permitted through the state's air programme, which is why their output never appears as a retail choice and why a New Haven business negotiating supply is competing against a grid that contains a large self-supplied institutional base.

• Yale's Central Power Plant at 120 Tower Parkway is a campus cogeneration facility, primarily natural gas fired, supplying electricity, steam heat and chilled water to the main campus including Science Hill.
• DEEP's Title V permit for the Central plant describes a 7.9-megawatt Solar Taurus 70 gas turbine with a heat recovery steam generator producing about 95,000 pounds an hour of 250 psig saturated steam.
• Yale reports two 7.9-megawatt combustion turbines installed in 2016 and three 1.5-megawatt peaking and emergency diesel generators on the site.
• The Sterling Power Plant at 309 Congress Avenue supplies electricity, steam and chilled water to Yale's medical campus and to Yale New Haven Hospital, with cogeneration added in 2012.
• The Central plant is described as providing up to fifty percent of Yale's campus needs; neither plant is a PURA-regulated utility, and both are permitted under the state's air programme.

What a New Haven business can shop, and how its class differs

A New Haven business shops the same thing a business elsewhere in Connecticut does, which is generation supply, but the schedule it shops against is not the same shape as the one an Eversource account sits on, and the difference is worth understanding before comparing offers. PURA's own decision on distribution rate structures states that United Illuminating's General Service class is comparable to Eversource's Rate 30, and then draws the distinction precisely: Rate GS has a non-demand category for customers who consume 1,560 kilowatt-hours or less in a monthly billing period, while above that threshold the distribution charges in the GS tariff include both a volumetric rate and a demand charge, whereas Eversource's Rate 30 includes only a demand charge. The decision adds a second difference: United Illuminating's transmission and federally mandated congestion charge components are seasonally differentiated across the year, where Eversource's Rate 30 charges a flat rate. The practical consequence is that a small New Haven business can sit on a schedule whose delivery cost moves with both volume and peak in the same month, and whose season changes part of the delivery charge even when consumption does not. Comparing two offers written for the two territories on headline structure alone will therefore mislead, because the same monthly usage sits on a different billing shape on each side of the state.

• PURA's decision in Docket No. 17-12-03RE11 states that United Illuminating's General Service class is comparable to Eversource's Rate 30.
• Rate GS has a non-demand category for customers consuming 1,560 kilowatt-hours or less in a monthly billing period.
• Above that threshold, the GS distribution charge includes both a volumetric rate and a demand charge, while Rate 30 includes only a demand charge.
• United Illuminating's transmission and federally mandated congestion charge components are seasonally differentiated; Eversource's Rate 30 is flat through the year.
• A small New Haven business can be billed on both volume and peak in the same month, so offers from the two territories are not comparable on structure alone.

Metering, demand and the arithmetic a New Haven site should do

Because the class can bill on volume and demand at once, the useful exercise for a New Haven site is to compute its own load factor and then see how the two charges move against each other. Load factor is kilowatt-hours divided by the product of maximum demand and the hours in the period, expressed as a percentage, and it is the number that tells a buyer whether a volumetric component or a demand component will dominate the delivery charge. A site with a flat, round-the-clock load has a high ratio and its consumption drives the bill; a site with a short, sharp peak and a long idle period has a low ratio and its single highest interval drives it. Both are billed from the same interval data, which the utility holds and will release for the account, and both are read from readings the account already has. The further step, once the arithmetic is done, is to convert an offer into a single comparable figure using the site's own twelve months rather than a supplier's assumed usage level, because an offer's implied price only holds at the consumption and demand profile it was written against. A New Haven business should also establish, before anything else, whether its load profile is the reason it sits where it does on the class ladder, since a schedule with a volumetric and a demand component can move a site's outcome in either direction as its operating pattern changes.

• Load factor is kilowatt-hours divided by maximum demand times the hours in the period, expressed as a percentage.
• A high-load-factor site is driven by volume; a low-load-factor site with a short peak is driven by its highest interval.
• Both components are billed from the same interval data, which the utility will release for the account.
• Convert every offer into one figure using the site's own twelve months, not a supplier's assumed usage level.
• Review whether a change in operating pattern moves the site's class position, because a mixed volumetric and demand schedule can shift either way.

What to assemble before a New Haven energy quote

The file a New Haven quote needs begins with the two bills and the rate schedule printed on each, since the schedule rather than the business type decides which charges apply, and it should note which company delivers each fuel to the address, because the delivering utility is the counterparty whose default supply any offer has to beat. Gather twelve months of consumption by month together with the maximum demand reading for each month, the account and meter numbers, and the contract's end date and notice period taken from the agreement rather than from the invoice. If a district or campus plant supplies part of the premises, establish what it covers, because that portion is not contestable and should not be included in the volumes a supplier prices. Ask specifically how an offer treats zone and capacity costs, given the subregion the account sits in, and get the answers in writing. Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory, and municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all. HighGround works as an advisor-assisted channel rather than a rate table, sourcing electricity and natural gas supply through the Broker Online Exchange supplier network. HighGround may receive provider compensation on completed purchases, and an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

• Both bills and the rate schedule printed on each, since the schedule decides which charges apply.
• Which company delivers each fuel to the address, because the delivering utility is the party whose default supply any offer must beat.
• Twelve months of consumption by month and the maximum demand reading for each month.
• Account and meter numbers, plus the contract end date and notice period from the agreement.
• What any campus or district plant covers, because that load is not contestable and should be excluded from priced volumes.
• How the offer treats zone and capacity costs, given the subregion the account sits in, answered in writing.
• Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory; municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all.
• HighGround may receive provider compensation on completed purchases, and an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

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