Eversource CT Rates January 2027: We Expect About a 30% Increase Based on Auction Results

What January 2027 looks like so far

Standard service is the electricity supply rate Eversource charges households that have not picked a competitive supplier. It resets twice a year, on January 1 and July 1. Eversource does not generate power. It buys it ahead of time from wholesale suppliers, in slices of 10% of the load, over about four quarterly bid days for each six-month period. The winning supplier takes on the full cost of service responsibility for its slice: energy, reserves, and every other charge from ISO New England.

For January through June 2027, Eversource bought 10% on January 27, 2026, 30% on April 7 and 40% on July 14. The last 20% was bought at the October bid day, and its prices stay confidential for 90 days, until January. The July results are now available, so we have data for 80% of the Eversource supply procurement.

Bid day	Share of Jan–Jun 2027	Average winning bid	Residential price
January 27, 2026	10%	14.05¢	14.05¢
April 7, 2026	30%	15.21¢	15.29¢
July 14, 2026	40%	15.09¢	15.17¢
Bought so far	80%	15.01¢	15.07¢

Winning bid = each bid’s term price, the average across months and customer classes that Eversource ranks bids on. Residential price = the same winning bids’ residential prices, weighted by residential load the way Eversource’s rate filings do it (Jan–Jun 2026 weights used until the 2027 weights are filed). Source: Eversource bid sheets; Grid Shopper calculation.

Eversource’s rate is determined by the price of the winning bids plus one adjustment, the true-up described below. If we assume the October slices cost the same as July’s, the supply price for the full six months comes to 15.09¢. Adding our central true-up of about 0.1¢ gives about 15.2¢ per kWh.

For a home using 700 kWh a month, 15.2¢ would be about $25 a month more for supply than today’s 11.57¢ rate, and about $18 a month more than last January’s 12.64¢. Delivery charges are separate and are not part of this estimate. The live numbers are on our Eversource page.

Supply auction prices have trended higher since January 2026

Eversource buys each six-month period at several auctions spread over about a year, and publishes the results 90 days after each one. That lets us follow what the same six months of power cost as the purchases came in. In the chart below, each line is one six-month period, and each dot is one auction’s price for it.

Electricity is more expensive in winter than in summer, so the fair comparison is the same season bought at the same time of year. Measured that way, every auction since January 2026 has cost more than the same auction a year earlier:

What Eversource bought	2025	2026	Change
Winter supply (January–June), bought in April	12.41¢	15.21¢	+23%
Winter supply, bought in July	12.64¢	15.09¢	+19%
Summer supply (July–December), bought in July	10.50¢	12.37¢	+18%

The smallest increase was the single slice bought on the storm day itself, 8% above the same purchase in January 2025.

The bid day that landed in a storm

Eversource’s first purchase for winter 2027 happened on January 27, 2026, the costliest day of Winter Storm Fern in New England’s wholesale market. Natural gas prices set records that day. Suppliers bidding on next winter’s power were watching the regional market’s costs spike in real time.

The January 2026 bids for winter 2027 ran from 14.05¢ to 27.67¢, almost a factor of two from lowest to highest. At the bid day before it, in October 2025, the spread was 13%. Eversource only planned to buy one slice that day and took the lowest bid. The 30% it bought in April came from just three bidders. By July the field had recovered to eight bidders, the most of any bid day in the chart, and the spread was back to about 20%. The price level stayed high, though: the cheapest July bid for winter 2027 was 16% above the cheapest July 2025 bid for winter 2026.

What happened in the wholesale market during Fern

In March 2025, ISO New England started a new day-ahead market for ancillary services. These are payments to generators, priced the day before, for holding capacity ready in case it is needed. The ISO expected the new market service to cost about $140 million a year. Its independent market monitor put the first year’s cost at $974 million. About 40% of that came in the five days of Winter Storm Fern, January 25 to 29, 2026, and 18% on January 27 alone.

Since last winter, ISO New England has proposed reforms to the new market services, which FERC has approved. The changes are intended to lower the cost of these services while maintaining grid reliability. Wholesale suppliers will be watching market results closely this winter as they work to calibrate their expectations for the cost to serve customers.

Suppliers that win a slice of Eversource’s load pay all of these ISO-NE costs for it, and they have to price them in months before the power is delivered. After a first winter that cost about seven times the ISO’s estimate, under new rules that have not yet been tested in a cold snap, it is reasonable to expect suppliers to build a larger cushion into their bids. The public data does not show how large that premium is.

The remaining unknown: the 2026 true-up

The residential rate stays flat for six months, but Eversource doesn’t pay suppliers a flat price. Its contract pays each winning supplier its bid price for each month, on the power customers actually used that month. A winning bid for winter 2027 looks like this:

When January and February come in colder than planned, customers use more power in the most expensive months, and Eversource pays out more than the flat rate collects. The reverse happens in a mild winter. Eversource settles the difference once a year through the generation service charge true-up. It is set in the November filing from Eversource’s projection of the year just ending, plus a few smaller items such as regulatory expense and bad debt.

The true-up was −1.08¢ in 2025, refunding a 2024 over-collection of $121 million. It started 2026 at −0.05¢ and rose to +0.40¢ in July, after 2025’s balance came in $22.7 million worse than Eversource had projected. Each $10 million of 2026 balance moves the January 2027 rate by about 0.11¢. A cold January and February point toward an under-collection, so we lean slightly positive (+0.1¢) and allow half a cent either way. The 2026 balance is not public until the November filing.

What comes next

• October 23: ISO New England’s ancillary services reforms take effect.
• Mid-November: Eversource files its January 1 rate with PURA (last year’s filing was November 17). We will add the filed rate to this post next to our estimate.
• January 2027: the October bid day’s prices become public, the last 20% of the period.

Further out, PURA decided on October 7 that Connecticut’s utilities should aim to buy about 20% of standard service directly from ISO New England’s spot markets, alongside full-requirements contracts. Eversource expects that to start in the second half of 2028, so it does not affect January 2027.

Sources

• Eversource, Connecticut wholesale supply RFP page: redacted bid sheets for January, April and July 2025 and 2026, October 2025; standard service contract (Article 5) and RFP (evaluation weights); Form IV weighting factors.
• PURA Docket 26-01-01: Eversource’s November 17, 2025 and May 15, 2026 rate filings (Exhibit 5, Attachment 1); August 17, 2026 filing (true-up calculation); procurement compliance filings. Docket 25-01-01 (January 2025 rate).
• PURA Docket 12-06-02RE05, final decision of October 7, 2026 (dynamic market purchases).
• ISO New England Internal Market Monitor, An Assessment of the Day-Ahead Ancillary Services Market (June 2026); FERC order accepting ER26-3176 (196 FERC ¶ 61,198, September 14, 2026).
• Connecticut OCC consumer alert on January 2026 standard service rates (November 18, 2025).
• Grid Shopper auction record and Connecticut rate board snapshots.