Massachusetts Rep. Thomas Golden and Sen. Michael Barrett held an Oversight Hearing on the DPU's decision to approve Eversource's proposal to include a demand charge as part of a monthly minimum reliability contribution on net metering customers. Rep. Golden accused the utility of purposefully making the new charges "as confusing as possible." He said, "Let me tell you something gentlemen, I'm not happy how this was rolled out. I'm not happy with the lack of information my office has received." Golden, co-chairman of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, helped write the 2016 law that permits utilities to levy a new minimum monthly charge, and he told Eversource executives they were making it "extremely, extremely difficult" for him to continue to support them in the policy. Price manipulation controversy In 2017, an environmental group accused Eversource and Avangrid of driving up electric, gas rates over several winters by buying up shipment capacity on a major pipeline that they ultimately did not use. The Environmental Defense Fund said both utilities routinely reserved big deliveries of natural gas on the Algonquin pipeline system for frigid days, but then sharply reduced those orders too late in the day for others to use that capacity. Those orders had the effect of driving up wholesale prices for natural gas during peak winter heating periods and in turn increasing the costs of electricity generated by gas-fired power plants. The two utilities “engaged in behavior that would tend to have the largest impact on prices,” said N. Jonathan Peress, a senior director at the New York-based environmental group. “That implies they knew their efforts would have some sort of pricing impact that would provide them with some commercial benefit.” Representatives for both utilities denied they did anything improper. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is reviewing the findings, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to open an investigation on the matter, and both the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and the Massachusetts Public Utilities Department are launching inquiries of their own. On Feb. 27, 2018, FERC announced their investigation “revealed no evidence of anticompetitive withholding of natural gas pipeline capacity on Algonquin Gas Transmission by New England shippers.” It said that following an extensive review Commission staff “determined that EDF’s study was flawed and led to incorrect conclusions about the alleged withholding.” A class-action lawsuit filed on November 14, 2017 against Avangrid, Inc.