Linemen from Massachusetts work to restore guidelines to utility poles along Port Road in Kennebunk after a storm in April 2024. The line in the foreground is a guidewire, not a power line. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Central Maine Power Co. on Friday asked state regulators for approval to collect $228 million from ratepayers to cover the costs of restoring power and cleaning up after more than two dozen storms last year.

With costs increasing now for the third year in a row, CMP proposed to bill customers this year and in 2026 for the expenses incurred in 2024. The two-year timeline is intended to stretch out the costs and ease the burden for ratepayers while also recognizing the possibility of more repair and recovery costs from future storms.

“CMP recognizes the significant level of recovery being requested and aims to strike an appropriate balance between minimizing near-term bill impacts and creating long-term deferrals that may create even larger pricing challenges in the future,” the utility said in its PUC filing.

Public Advocate Heather Sanborn said CMP’s request marks the third consecutive year the utility has had more than $100 million in storm costs and “demonstrates the urgent need for utilities to take comprehensive and cost-effective steps to reduce storm costs.”

“Over the coming weeks, we will be scrutinizing these costs to ensure they were prudently incurred and comply with the storm cost settlement reached between the Office of the Public Advocate and CMP last year,” she said in an emailed statement.

Prudence is a standard of review used to judge a utility’s performance and its decisions. If regulators rule that a utility acted prudently, it will be allowed to recover costs from ratepayers. If not, it would turn to its earnings, inviting shareholder resistance.

Storm costs are one of several factors that influence monthly power bills. The impact of Friday’s request on ratepayers will not be known until April when CMP submits another filing to the Maine Public Utilities Commission seeking approval to pay for purchase agreements required by the Legislature for power generated by wind and solar farms and maintenance of unused CMP assets such as the shuttered Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Wiscasset.

Storm repair work includes a range of costs such as employee overtime, housing for out-of-state workers, and repair and replacement of transmission lines, poles and other equipment.

Increased costs would appear on customers’ bills beginning July 1 after the PUC reviews CMP’s request and sets rates extending to June 30, 2026. The rates typically include charges for renewable power, conservation and efficiency and other programs and policies.

CMP said it responded to 25 storms in 2024, including a March ice storm and April nor’easter. The two storms combined affected more than 600,000 customers, which is the great majority of its 650,000 customers.

An early spring storm last March cut power to about 200,000 electric customers across the state, with tens of thousands still in the dark a day after the storm covered much of the state in snow and ice. It brought down trees and power lines in all 16 counties.

About 6 inches of snow blanketed Portland and rain, freezing rain and sleet that followed blanketed much of the city in a layer of ice, which poses the greatest threats to power lines and tree branches.

In that storm, CMP said it paid $26.8 million for contractors, $4.1 million in overtime labor and benefits and $524,113 for travel and lodging.

In early April, hundreds of thousands of Mainers lost power in a nor’easter with heavy snow and strong winds. Outages peaked at nearly 350,000 CMP customers, with Cumberland and York counties hardest hit. CMP said at the time it was among the worst snow loading on trees arborists had seen in more than a decade.

CMP storm costs were $32.3 million 10 years ago and have generally, but not always, risen. The exceptions were in 2015 when no major storms hit Maine, 2018 when recovery costs were $4.5 million and in 2021 when costs were about $11 million.

Since 2019, storm costs have increased from $37.5 million to $71.8 million in 2020, $119 million in 2022 and to $161.7 million in 2023.

The PUC, responding to an increasing number and severity of storms, last summer directed utilities to invest in improving the reliability and resilience of the grid, and apply cost-saving technology that helps manage peak demand and electricity congestion without building or upgrading a grid system requiring big investments. These could include rooftop solar installations, batteries that store and release energy, and energy efficiency.