Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • March 19, 2018 • Hartford Business Journal 11 FOCUS necessitates this formal action." The dispute CBIA's PURA petition reads essen- tially like a contract dispute. Specifically, CBIA says its Energy Connections service and its energy supplier management partner, USource, placed 80 member-clients last April into supplier contracts with Mint, at an agreed upon price of 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour. However, right before the contracts were set to kick in last December, Mint said it would not honor 65 of those deals, CBIA said. Instead, Mint offered a new, higher price of 11 cents per kilowatt hour for those customers, CBIA said. Mint attributed its actions to "changes in the energy marketplace that would render those [original] con- tracts unprofitable" to the company, according to the petition. CBIA scrambled to find a new supplier, but its affected members ended up with higher rates than they budgeted for under the original Mint contract, CBIA said. CBIA estimates that the higher-priced contracts cost its members an addi- tional $313,400. It called Mint's practices "unethical" and "oppressive." Mint also changed contract terms for four other CBIA clients, whose deals were already active, CBIA said, costing them tens of thousands of dollars extra. It does not appear that CBIA or any of the aggrieved businesses have sued Mint in state or federal court. CBIA declined to be interviewed for this story. In an email, a Mint representa- tive characterized CBIA's concerns as a difference of opinion it aims to resolve. "Mint Energy has reviewed the petition filed with the PURA, and views the issue as one regard- ing differing interpretations of contractual terms between experienced business entities," the company said. "Mint will vigor- ously defend these claims in an effort to reach a swift resolution to this issue." The Office of Consumer Counsel (OCC), which advocates for consum- ers broadly and with regard to energy issues, as well as the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protec- tion are parties to the contested case, as required by state law. Joseph Rosenthal, a principal attor- ney at the OCC, said the agency would follow the case as it proceeds "and try to advocate that justice be done on behalf of the consumers involved." There are more than 70 aggrega- tors, that, like CBIA, are licensed to operate in the Connecticut electricity supplier market, most of them for commer- cial customers, ac- cording to PURA. "Very unusual" case Originally licensed in late 2010, Mint Energy has only had one complaint lodged against it during that time, not counting the pending petition. In 2017, a Waterford Dunkin' Donuts franchise owner complained of an unanticipated rate hike. Mint eventually agreed to reduce by half the termination fee it had sought from the customer, essentially allowing her to opt out of the contract early, according to PURA spokesman Michael Coyle. Unlike the residential market, where the state has dealt with some "bad actors," the commercial market has remained relatively unscathed, said state Rep. Lonnie Reed (D-Branford), co-chair of the legislature's Energy & Technology Committee, who called the CBIA complaint "very unusual." "CBIA by [its] nature [is] very pro-busi- ness, so it's very unusual to see them go after a business entity that they feel has done them wrong," Reed said. The variable rate contract ban for residential customers took effect in 2015 after consumers complained about spikes in electricity costs that didn't jive with what they interpreted as their contractual obligations. Some of the suppliers involved proved to be "fly-by- night" firms that entered the market to take advantage of consumers, Reed said. "They're the ones we just want to get out of the state," Reed said. "The minute it got competitive those companies could not make a deal and passed a price tag onto consumers. But we had not seen it in the commercial markets because the commercial customers have their own energy people on deck and tend to be more savvy [than the average residential customer]." Third-party energy supplier customer base Third-party energy suppliers served nearly 460,000 Connecticut residential customers in 2015, according to the latest data available from the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA). Suppliers are quite active in the commercial market, too, where they served 81,589 customers in that same year. While that's a smaller overall number, it repre- sents two-thirds of eligible business customers, according to PURA. In addition, many businesses use more electricity than the average home.

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