A long-running transmission fight is now centered on when customers get paid back
New England governors and utility regulators are pressing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to keep a major refund order on track, arguing that consumers should not have to wait longer for relief after years of paying transmission returns that FERC later judged too high. The dispute now centers on roughly $1.5 billion in refunds tied to transmission owners’ return on equity in the region.
In a filing described by Utility Dive, the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners asked FERC to dismiss a request by Eversource and Avangrid to stay the refund order while litigation continues. The regulators’ position is blunt: delaying repayment would prolong harm to households that have already absorbed excessive costs for more than a decade.
The case goes back to 2011
This fight has unusual staying power. According to the source text, the first complaint over utilities’ transmission return on equity in New England was filed in 2011. Since then, the issue has remained in litigation for roughly 15 years, culminating in a March 19 FERC decision that retroactively cut the base return on equity for transmission owners in the region to 9.57% from 10.57%.
That one-percentage-point change sounds narrow, but over a long period and across large transmission asset bases it translates into substantial money. The New England regulators said the utilities overcharged ratepayers by more than $1 billion since the first complaint was filed. The filing also tied the issue to current affordability pressure facing households.
Importantly, the utilities are not accused of misconduct. Utility Dive notes that FERC did not find wrongdoing. Instead, the commission concluded that the previously authorized return had become too high. That distinction matters because the dispute is fundamentally about regulatory calibration, not fraud or abuse.
The companies say they need more time
Eversource and Avangrid have argued that the refund process should be delayed while a court reviews the matter. FERC had already extended a 30-day deadline for the utilities to complete the refunds to May 20, 2027. The utilities and ISO New England had asked for a longer extension, to Dec. 17, 2027.
The sums involved are significant. Eversource’s New England utilities, according to the companies’ earlier filing cited by Utility Dive, owe about $880 million in refunds. Avangrid’s New England utilities owe about $203 million. Those figures help explain why both the companies and state officials are fighting hard over timing and procedure.
For utilities, a stay would preserve cash and avoid the possibility of paying refunds before all appeals are exhausted. For regulators and governors, another delay would amount to making ratepayers finance the cost of prolonged litigation on top of the disputed charges themselves.
Affordability is driving the urgency
The political force behind the states’ filing is not hard to see. Electric affordability has become a central issue across the Northeast, and transmission costs are one of the components that feed directly into what households and businesses ultimately pay. In that environment, a refund order of this scale is not just an accounting adjustment. It is a test of whether the regulatory system can deliver relief after a long-running overpayment dispute.
The states’ filing emphasized exactly that point, arguing that granting a stay would compound the harm by delaying urgently needed relief to consumers who have borne unjustified costs for years. Even though the source text does not include the full filing, the quoted language makes clear that public officials are treating timing as a substantive consumer issue rather than a procedural footnote.
The broader stakes extend beyond New England. Transmission investment is rising across the country as regions add renewable generation, replace aging equipment and expand capacity. Return-on-equity decisions play a major role in setting the incentives utilities face when financing those projects. A contested refund order of this size will be watched closely by both consumer advocates and transmission owners in other jurisdictions.
What comes next
The immediate question is whether FERC grants any further delay. If it does not, utilities will continue moving toward repayment under the existing timeline even as legal challenges proceed. If it does, the commission will be signaling that the burden of uncertainty should continue to sit with ratepayers rather than companies, at least temporarily.
Either way, the case illustrates how slowly energy regulation can move and how much money can remain in dispute while it does. Fifteen years after the first complaint, New England is still sorting out what a fair transmission return should have been and when customers should be made whole.
For households facing high bills, that timeline is the core of the frustration. The states’ message to FERC is that the matter has already taken long enough. The commission’s next move will show whether consumer relief or procedural caution gets priority in one of the region’s biggest utility refund fights in years.
This article is based on reporting by Utility Dive. Read the original article.
Originally published on utilitydive.com
