ALBANY — The Appellate Division’s Third Department in Albany issued a ruling Thursday upholding a 2022 state law requiring electric utilities to reimburse customers for long storm-related outages.
All of the state’s major utilities had joined the lawsuit, which sought to essentially overturn the law. The law also bars utilities from later recovering the storm costs from its ratepayers, or customers, as a whole.
The law was passed after several winter storms and Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020 that left 900,000 utility customers across the state without service. The law requires that customers receive a $25 bill credit for each 24-hour period of an outage that lasts longer than 72 hours. It also allows consumers and small businesses to receive up to $540 for spoiled food from prolonged outages…