NASUCA
Affordability is one of those issues that everyone is talking about right now. It comes up in rate cases, in long-term planning, and in conversations about everything from grid modernization to large-load growth. But for most customers, it still shows up in a much simpler way: a number on a monthly bill that may or may not fit within the rest of the household budget.
The challenge, of course, is that those numbers don’t happen by accident. They are the result of a long series of decisions about what to build, how to build it, and how those costs are ultimately recovered.
This feature brings together a range of perspectives on how those decisions are being made today. In our conversation with NASUCA Executive Director David Springe, there is a clear sense of how much the regulatory landscape has changed, and how that growing complexity is shaping affordability challenges across the country.
That theme carries through in a roundtable with the NASUCA Officers, where the focus shifts to the day-to-day work of evaluating investments, asking difficult questions, and making sure the analysis behind major decisions holds up.
State perspectives help ground that discussion. Chris Ayers describes the pressures building in North Carolina as infrastructure needs and large-load growth accelerate, while also emphasizing the importance of managing costs before they reach the bill. Claire Coleman offers a view from Connecticut, where affordability is being incorporated more directly into program design and regulatory frameworks.
Across each of these conversations, one idea comes up again and again: affordability is not just something to address after the fact. It is something that has to be built into the decisions that shape the system itself.
NASUCA conversations at fortnightly.com
- David Springe, NASUCA Executive Director
- Chris Ayers, North Carolina Utilities Commission Public Staff Executive Director
- Claire Coleman, Connecticut Consumer Counsel
- NASUCA Roundtable: Confronting Affordability and Equity, with NASUCA President Michael Moody, Vice President Tom Content, Treasurer Anthony Ornelas, Secretary Karen Stachowski, and Executive Director David Springe
