Central Maine Power company customers could save some $56 million over the next three years, thanks to the retirement of some long-term expenses.
They’re called stranded costs and assets, items such as long-term power contracts that cost more than current market rates or costs associated with the mothballing of the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant. And there are some benefits too, from a long-term, low-cost Hydro-Quebec energy contract that CMP can resell, on customers’ behalf, for a profit.
“What we’re seeing now is that some of the larger negative contracts, some of the ones that have been very expensive from going back decades, those are finally ending, so the continual losses on that has stopped. And therefore those contracts that are in the money we start to see the benefit, without the drag,” says John Carroll, CMP’s spokesman.
Carroll projects average electricity bills will be reduced by a little over $3 a month. The company’s three-year plan for allocating stranded costs will now be reviewed by state regulators.