The Role Advocates Play
Rachel Bryant is Executive Editor of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Affordability is one of those words that shows up everywhere in our industry right now. In commission meetings. In legislative hearings. In rate cases. In utility planning documents.
I grew up in a household where energy burden was very real. My mom worked constantly. She was doing what so many parents do. Keeping the lights on. Keeping food in the fridge. Trying to keep up with whatever expensive trend her daughter was insisting was necessary that week.
She didn’t have time to analyze every bill that arrived in the mailbox. Most people don’t.
If the number was higher than expected, the reaction wasn’t to open a regulatory filing or compare rate structures. It was usually something more practical: turn down the thermostat, delay another expense, try to stretch the budget a little further that month.
That’s how many households experience utility bills. And it also means that most consumers will never know how much work happens behind the scenes before that bill ever reaches their mailbox. They don’t see the testimony, the data requests, the modeling, or the negotiations that take place long before a rate decision is made.
And they almost never see the people whose full-time job is to ask difficult questions on their behalf.