As Iran war continues, Maine PUC bets electricity prices won’t go down
A worker makes his way up the transmission tower while performing maintenance on lines in Gorham in August 2025. (Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer)
The Maine Public Utilities Commission agreed last week to split up its procurement of electricity supply — essentially betting that costs won’t go down any time soon.
The commission will secure 20% of next year’s electricity supply for customers covered by Central Maine Power Co. this summer, and the remaining amount in November — on the regular schedule.
Similarly, the PUC plans to split up the purchase of electricity supply for the area covered by Versant in northern and eastern Maine. The PUC agreed to procure 20% of the annual load for the Bangor Hydro District in eastern Maine and 40% for the Maine Public District in Aroostook County this summer.
Electric utilities have seen significant price volatility since the start of the war in Iran in February, PUC Chair Phil Bartlett said. Splitting up the buy is intended to soften the impact on the price of next year’s standard offer — by which time the war might have sent prices even higher.
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“It’s very difficult to know whether the war in Iran will be over or the Strait of Hormuz will be open between now and November,” Bartlett said in deliberations about the plan last week. “In my view, we’re well-served by providing some limited hedge.”
The PUC puts a request for bids out each year for the next year’s electricity supply. Since Maine law changed in 2000 to prevent utilities from generating energy themselves, customers have had the option of using a supplier of their choosing or going with the default standard offer. Most use the standard offer.
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A jump in the standard offer last year raised the average monthly CMP bill by about $12.
Bartlett said the volatility has the potential to especially impact New England customers, who primarily rely on liquefied natural gas power plants. About one-fifth of the world’s natural gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz — the focal point of the war in Iran.
The U.S. and Iran reached an agreement in June to pause their war after about four months of on-and-off fighting. That agreement has since eroded and fighting resumed this month in and near the strait.
Four U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict since fighting flared about two weeks ago, and markets have remained unsteady.
And while the fighting appears to have once again temporarily paused with renewed negotiations underway, Bartlett said impacts on electricity prices are nearly impossible to predict.
The PUC has split up electricity supply bids in recent years, Bartlett said, but only by a couple weeks in November. That scheme limits the influence of one-day spikes, but not long-term volatility, he said.
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And even under the new two-part bid process, the standard offer customers see will mostly depend on prices later this year. Only 20% of the electricity supply delivered to CMP’s 650,000-plus customers next year will come from this July bid process.
“What the results are will really depend on what happens in November,” Bartlett said.
A 2025 London Economics International study commissioned by the PUC recommended splitting up the bids into several different points during the year. This cycle is the first that the PUC has adopted that strategy.
Bartlett said the ultimate price for the standard offer will not be released until it is finalized later this year. The commission will continue to discuss whether to further split up the buys, he said.
The current price sits at just below 13 cents per kilowatt hour, up from about 10.6 cents in 2025.
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Tagged: Central Maine Power Co., CMP, cost of living, electric utilities, Iran war, maine public utilities commission, Versant Power
Ethan reports on cost of living for the Portland Press Herald. Before he joined in mid-2026, he covered local news in Augusta and surrounding areas and ran a weekly newsletter for the Kennebec Journal. More by Ethan Horton
