An electric vehicle charge could come off Connecticut power bills this year, top Democrats announced on Thursday. It’s part of their plan to lower high electric rates.

But they warned that removing similar “public benefits” charges – as Republicans have proposed – will do little to bring customers’ bills down.

Connecticut has some of the most expensive electricity in the nation. Customers are demanding relief.

“We have obviously heard many, many complaints about rates and about the volatility of rates,” said Senate President Martin Looney (D-New Haven).

On Thursday, state Senate Democrats unveiled legislation to address the issue. But for now, it’s short on specifics.

“This bill is an open book,” said state Sen. Norm Needleman (D-Essex), the co-chair of the Legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee. “There are no specific things that we’re going to talk about at this moment.”

But Needleman said Democrats are possibly willing to remove at least one charge from electric bills – the cost of building out electric vehicle chargers. Instead, state transportation bonds would pay for it.

“The EV program is the one that sort of comes to mind,” Needleman said. “Maybe we can move that into bonding. That’s a discussion with the governor.”

Republicans want to go even further.

"I’m glad to hear some Democrats finally starting to talk about the high costs of energy in our state, unfortunately they were woefully short on specifics," said state Rep. Traacy Marra (R-Norwalk). “What the majority party isn’t talking about are specific substantial reforms like House Republicans have repeatedly proposed, including moving the 'Public Benefit Charges' permanently off ratepayer bills, capping all future Power Purchase Agreements to no more than 150% over the wholesale electric market price, redefining Class I renewable energy sources to enable competition to lower the cost of these energy sources, and restoring the independence of the Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA), by separating it from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP)."

But all of those items may only save you a few dollars a month. Gov. Ned Lamont called dropping them a cosmetic change and insisted that bills won’t come down until there’s a more stable supply of power.

“It doesn’t accomplish anything,” he said on Thursday. “You want to raise taxes? Is that what your plan is? You’ve got to pay for these things.”

For longer-term relief, lawmakers are looking at more nuclear power.

Democratic leaders said they may loosen restrictions on where new plants can be built in Connecticut. Right now, they can only be located at an existing nuclear facility. Connecticut only has one nuclear plant, Millstone in Waterford.

“I think that we’re going to visit that and possibly allow for expansion of nuclear beyond just the existing nuclear site of Millstone,” Needleman said.

Needleman said lawmakers are not looking to build another massive facility like Millstone. Instead, they could allow “small modular reactors” that are cheaper to build and less intrusive on the surrounding area. But so far, only three SMRs exist – and none in the U.S. Needleman estimated an SMR could not go online in Connecticut until the 2030s.

Millstone supplies a third of Connecticut’s electricity. The state’s two electric suppliers are required to purchase it at a fixed price, and that can lead to wild price fluctuations like customers saw last summer.

Utilities want permission to spread out those price swings.

“We see that type of regulatory approach, where you try to smooth things out, in other states in the Northeast,” said Avangrid vice president Kim Harriman. “We said, let’s not give it all back at once. We’ll hold it in an account. We’ll give customers interest, so that way we could use it to offset when there was a bad year. And last year was a bad year.”

Harriman believes better technology can provide relief too.

“We have to look at technologies like smart meters, like we have, so we can get customers’ information as to their usage,” she said.

Needleman’s Energy and Technology Committee will spend the next few weeks filling in the details of their energy plan, then hold a public hearing on it, before taking a vote by March 20. The bill – as well as other electric legislation – will then go to the full General Assembly.

During the panel’s first meeting last week, divisions already surfaced over whether to pursue more natural gas.

“I do believe there is some form of climate change, but the fact is, we need more natural gas and we need more capacity,” said state Rep. David Yaccarino (R-North Haven).

But many Democrats said that doubling-down on fossil fuels is a mistake, with massive fires in Los Angeles and floods that devastated a dozen towns here in Connecticut last August.

“We are in the throes of climate change and we do have to address it as the immediate crisis that it is,” added state Rep. Nick Gauthier (D-Waterford).