Officials from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine say the operator of New England’s regional power grid is unfairly blocking competition.
Officials say ISO New England has labeled every project since 2011 as an emergency, which allowed them to limit bidding.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and other officials sent a letter to federal energy regulators.
“I am calling on ISO New England to open up transmission work to competitive bidding. It doesn’t make any sense that we don’t encourage competition in that space to get the lowest bid possible.”
Tong says competition could save ratepayers millions of dollars. Connecticut’s electricity prices are among the highest in the nation.
“It’s no secret that Connecticut and many of our neighboring states have some of the highest energy rates in the country. And the way to attack that is to encourage competition in the building of transmission and the offering of transmission.”
ISO New England is based in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It operates up to 32,000 megawatts of electricity across New England.
A spokesperson for ISO New England says the organization properly applied its federally approved tariff and has implemented a competitive solicitation in the Boston area.
