We must remember that Connecticut has a legislatively mandated renewable portfolio standard requiring that increasing amounts of renewable energy be consumed in lieu of non-renewable electricity. Today the standard requires that 14% of the electricity consumed be from renewable resources in three different classes. This requirement increases annually and by the year 2020, only ten years from now, it reaches the level of 27%. Most of the New England states have similar renewable requirements.

Yet Connecticut and most of New England have limited renewable electricity generation. The most common renewable generation types are wind, solar, bio-mass and waste-to-energy, but these resources are generally not located near where the electricity is actually used. Therefore, significant investments in transmission will be needed to bring this energy to the customers that will use it. We are discussing this issue with a number of other transmission owners in New England.

The Washington policymakers’ focus on development of a “smart grid” has provided insight to our customers on additional means to use technology to become even more energy efficient in their homes and businesses. As a leader in the U.S. for over twenty years in providing energy efficiency and conservation products to our customers, we requested funding for smart grid applications. These included in-home displays, smart meters, plug-in electric vehicle charging stations and upgrades to the technology that helps the transmission and distribution system operate more efficiently. Unfortunately our request did not receive funding but that has not deterred us from pursuing these programs. We fully plan to continue the leadership we have demonstrated in the past and provide our customers with these products. We have implemented plans to place smart meters in about 25% of our customers’ locations by 2012, and be enabled by the smart system we have had in place for the past ten years. We also upgraded in 2009 to a full two-way communications-enabled mesh network.

We implemented a web site that allows our customers to view information about their own daily energy usage, compare their energy usage to others with similar requirements and look at energy-saving and cost-saving alternatives to their current use. We fully believe that we all should use our scarce energy resources as efficiently as possible. We are committed to providing our customers with the tools, information and personnel necessary to help them utilize energy efficiently.