By Michael Kuser

Avangrid reported second-quarter earnings of $110 million ($0.36/share), up slightly from $107 million ($0.35/share) in the same period in 2018, though first half net income was down about 7% from the first six months of last year.

A subsidiary of Spain-based Iberdrola, Avangrid owns United Illuminating, Connecticut Natural Gas, Central Maine Power, New York State Electric and Gas, and Rochester Gas & Electric.

In an analyst call on Wednesday, CEO James P. Torgerson said the company was “disappointed with the continued lack of wind resource that impacted most of our fleet.” (See Avangrid Earnings Drop on Weak Wind.)

The firm’s New England Clean Energy Connect transmission project is “on track,” he said, adding that the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities recently approved 20-year contracts between Hydro-Québec and utilities Eversource Energy, National Grid and Unitil.

In New York, NYSEG and RG&E filed their electric and gas rate cases in May for new rates effective in the second quarter of 2020, which includes requests for recovery of resilience investments and deferral of staging costs for storms. NYSEG was among utilities penalized last month by the New York Public Service Commission for safety and reliability issues. (See NYPSC Dings Utilities for 2018 Reliability, Safety.)

Central Maine Power is currently subject to hearings by the Maine Public Utilities Commission regarding the mismanaged introduction of a new billing system last year that saw some customers’ bills double or triple.

Torgerson said that the commission outsourced a forensic audit of the billing system and “concluded that it was billing things correctly.” He said the high bills were in part a reflection of a very cold winter. But for some customers, the company also failed to issue bills for a couple of months. In other cases, unpaid bills from one month got added to a second month.

“The issue really is … the fact that we didn’t provide the customer service that our customers expect,” he said. “Every individual has different circumstances, and we need to go through every one of those and work with the customer to make sure they understand what occurred … so that they can have confidence that actually their bill was correct.”

Commission staff are recommending a 75- to 100-basis-point reduction in CMP’s return on equity for one year until the company demonstrates that it has improved customer service “and gotten things back on track,” Torgerson said.

A Second Wind

Vineyard Wind, the company’s joint venture with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, had a rough start to the summer when the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in June declined to issue its final environmental impact statement (EIS) on the 1,200-MW offshore wind project. This month, the Massachusetts town of Edgartown’s Conservation Commission denied a permit for the project’s transmission cables to come ashore on Martha’s Vineyard. (See “Land Ho is Wind Woe,” New England Officials Speak on Grid Transformation.)

On Tuesday, however, the Massachusetts legislature authorized the Barnstable Town Council to grant an easement at Covell’s Beach for Vineyard Wind to land its cables and build an interconnection to the New England grid.

On BOEM’s delay, Torgerson said, “We are confident that the pending reviews can be concluded shortly, and the final EIS released soon after. … We’re still working with them and pretty confident that we can get something done by the end of August, and that will keep us on track with our time frame.

“It would be challenging to move forward if we don’t get the final EIS in the next four to six weeks,” he said. “That having been said, it doesn’t mean the project is dead by any stretch. It just means we’re going to have to reconfigure things or do something differently.”

Laura Beane, head of Avangrid Renewables, said, “Right now, we are absolutely focused on getting to resolution under the current configuration and maintaining the current schedule. If we’re required to, I think we’ll look at other alternatives, but really our focus remains on maintaining our current schedule and working through these issues.”

In addition, the company said it had purchased the 226-MW Patriot Wind project in Texas upon commercial operation in June and that it has 763 MW of renewables assets under construction and on track to come online by the end of this year. Avangrid also secured a power purchase agreement on its 140-MW La Joya ll wind farm in California.