National Grid's gas rate request would add about $213 a year to a typical Wareham heating bill, company tables show

WAREHAM A typical National Grid gas heating customer in Wareham would pay about $213 more a year if state regulators approve the company's latest rate request, which it asked to take effect Dec. 1.

That figure comes from bill tables the company filed Sept. 30 with the Department of Public Utilities for an average residential heating customer in the former Colonial Gas territory, which includes Wareham. The yearly bill would go from $1,878.48 to $2,091.71, an 11.4% increase, and $160 of it would land in the peak heating season. The totals include the company's illustrative gas supply and adjustment charges, which change separately during the year.

The department suspended the new rates until Dec. 1 to investigate them. Its ruling sets base rates for every Boston Gas and former Colonial Gas customer and decides whether the company gets a five-year plan that would let it adjust those rates each year by a formula tied to inflation.

"The Company's proposals were developed with an emphasis on customer affordability, by balancing the need to provide a safe and reliable natural gas system with moderating bill impacts and support for greater rate stability over time," National Grid wrote in its Sept. 30 reply brief.

Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell's office, which intervened in the case for ratepayers, asked the department to reject the increase National Grid proposed and adopt the office's own recommendations. "The Company's rate increase request includes multiple proposals that would inappropriately and needlessly increase costs for ratepayers," her office wrote in its Aug. 21 brief.

Wareham is the only community South Coast 360 covers that appears on National Grid's published lists of the cities and towns its Boston Gas and Colonial Gas systems serve. Gas customers in Fall River, Somerset, Swansea and Westport are served by Liberty, whose winter charges, along with those of NSTAR Gas and Eversource Gas Company of Massachusetts, we reported Oct. 28.

What it would cost

Boston Gas Company, which does business as National Grid and serves the former Colonial Gas territory, filed the case Jan. 16 seeking about $342 million more a year in distribution revenue, according to the department's notice. About $198 million of that is the transfer into base rates of work finished through 2024 under its gas system enhancement program, the notice said, leaving a net increase of about $144 million, which the company put at 12% of its distribution revenue. Its fifth revision, filed Sept. 30, puts the total increase at $338 million and the net increase, after amounts already recovered through other charges, at about $146 million, the company's reply brief says.

The fixed customer charge every residential heating customer pays would rise from $12 to $18 a month, a 50% increase, under the company's rate design. For customers who use gas but do not heat with it, the charge would go from $10 to $15.

Off-peak bills would rise faster in percentage terms than peak season bills. For the average Colonial heating customer, the company's tables show the off-peak bill going from $266 to $319, up 19.8%, while the peak season bill rises 10%. A Colonial customer who uses gas but does not heat with it would pay $547 a year instead of $477.

A new discount for low-income customers

Low-income customers now get a flat 25% discount. National Grid proposes six discount tiers, with a household's tier set by its income, according to the notice and the company's tables. For heating customers the tiers would run from 15% to 87%, and for customers who do not heat with gas from 20% to 90%. For a low-income heating customer in the Colonial territory, the yearly bill would rise 26% in the tier with the smallest discount and fall 81% in the tier with the largest, the company's Sept. 30 tables show.

What the attorney general wants instead

The attorney general's office asked the department to reject the five-year plan and to cap the residential heating customer charge at $14.75 a month. It also opposed recovery for two projects it said the department had already denied, listing $107.7 million for National Grid's Gas Business Enablement program and $45 million for the Mid-Cape Main Replacement project.

The office objected to the company recovering $14 million it waived, refunded or credited to customers after it failed to send timely bills in the winter of 2024 to 2025, which the office said affected more than 35,000 customers. And it asked that $129 million in gas system enhancement program costs above a department cap be spread over 10 years without carrying charges, instead of the five months from January to May 2027 that the company proposed.

National Grid asked for a 10.25% return on equity. The attorney general's expert recommended 9.375%, and the office noted the department has not approved a return above 10% for any gas or electric utility in the last decade.

In its reply, National Grid said the Gas Business Enablement costs were prudently incurred and asked to recover $106.6 million of them over seven years. It said the $50.88 million penalty already absorbed on the Mid-Cape project has held it accountable. Moving the earlier gas system enhancement work into base rates would cost customers $46.8 million less over five years than the attorney general's approach, the company wrote, and its current rate plan has saved customers about $94 million in operating expenses.

What happens next

The department's three commissioners decide the case. Public comment closed April 30 after eight public hearings, the nearest in South Yarmouth. National Grid's summary of the case says it prepared the filing to put rate changes in place Jan. 1, 2027, based on rates effective Dec. 1. Massachusetts protects households facing financial hardship from gas and electric shutoffs from Nov. 15 to March 15; here is how that protection works.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.