Ryann Busillo | 8/5/2025
In our previous blog, Connor summarized Final Termination Notices (FTNs) and Deferred Payment Agreements (DPAs). Here, I’ll dive deeper into terminations and their outcomes, exploring questions like: how often do terminations occur, and what happens before—and after—a shutoff?
Why Energy Is Not Just another Subscription
Receiving a Final Termination Notice is flat-out undesirable. In today’s world, energy is a basic requirement for almost everything we do, whether we realize it or not. It’s easy to forget how deeply we rely on this service when all it takes to turn on the lights is a flick of the switch. But as easy as energy is to access, it is not ours. We, the people, do not own the power plants or the transmission lines that bring electricity to our homes and businesses. Like Netflix or Spotify, we pay a “subscription” fee to use it. But energy is unique: we depend on it, and we pay for it after we’ve used it, much like a line of credit.
While services like Netflix and Spotify might offer entertainment, they don’t provide the foundation for daily life or a dignified existence. Energy does.
More Than an Inconvenience: A Day Without Power
Imagine waking up and walking to the bathroom. You reach for the light switch, but nothing happens. It’s frustrating, but the morning sunlight is enough to get by. You move through your routine and turn the shower knob to hot. It’s January in Kingston, and the cold air makes you crave warmth. You notice it was harder than usual to get out of bed. The water never heats up. The radiator is cold to the touch.
Earlier in the month, Central Hudson sent you a Final Termination Notice. But with gas, groceries, and rent already stretching your budget, you left the notice on the kitchen counter. This was your first time falling more than two months behind—winter energy bills tend to be higher due to heating, and you hadn’t anticipated the unexpected $75 increase, even while trying to limit your usage. Five days later, Central Hudson sent you a Deferred Payment Agreement. You read the terms: a 15% down payment and monthly installments at about half your usual bill. You think, I can’t afford this. I need to eat. I need gas to get to work. And keeping a roof over your head feels more urgent than the energy bill.
Your phone rings. It’s your boss. The battery is at 2%. You run to the car to charge it, skipping breakfast—your stove doesn’t work, and the fridge is no longer running.
Stories like this aren’t hypothetical, they reflect the real, everyday trade-offs thousands of customers are forced to make. And the data backs it up.
May 2025: Breaking Down The Numbers
In May 2025, Central Hudson issued 14,510 Final Termination Notices. Of those, 6,800 reached “field action” status, meaning their meters were officially eligible for shutoff. In the end, 1,109 accounts were actually terminated—about 16% of those eligible for shutoff. As shown below, only 4.9% of accounts who received an FTN were shut off.
A Note on Central Hudson’s Shut off Practices: Central Hudson’s collections team is small, so staff focus on terminating accounts with the oldest or largest debt; if another field action account happens to be along the same route, it might get shut off, too.
Understanding Your Options After an FTN
Let’s break down what’s happening. FTNs are only sent to customers who are 60 or more days behind on their energy bill. At that point, customers have two main options: enter a Deferred Payment Agreement or apply for public assistance—more on that later. A third, less realistic option is to pay the balance in full. But for customers already struggling to pay a single month’s bill, this isn’t feasible.
So, what happens to those 1,109 accounts that were actually terminated? As with the options following an FTN, customers can: enroll in a DPA, attempt to access public assistance, or pay the balance in full—again, an unlikely choice.
The Reconnection Reality: What the Data Tells Us
It’s important to note that this is a generalization—the data does not distinguish between accounts that were shut off and reconnected within the same month versus those disconnected earlier and reconnected later. Still, the takeaway is clear: Deferred Payment Agreements (DPAs) remain the primary pathway to avoid or recover from service termination.
According to Central Hudson’s report, in May 2025, 590 of the 1,109 accounts were reconnected, while 519 remained disconnected by month’s end. Of the 590 reconnected accounts, 578—about 52% of all shutoffs—were restored through DPAs. Only 12 customers, or 1.1%, were reconnected using grants from the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) or the Department of Social Services (DSS).
Put simply: Out of every 100 homes at risk of termination in May 2025, 84 avoided shutoff altogether. Of the 16 that lost service, 8 were reconnected through a Deferred Payment Agreement (DPA), one was restored through HEAP or DSS assistance, and 7 remained without service by the end of the month.
FTNs and Shutoffs: A Historical Look
The graph above shows the percentage of at-risk accounts that actually lost service each month from January 2020 through May 2025. In late 2020, fewer than 2.3% of eligible customers were disconnected (compared to 16% in May 2025). Then, in April 2020, New York State imposed a pandemic-related moratorium on shutoffs that lasted through December 2021. Central Hudson’s botched rollout of a new billing system in September 2021 (see: How the Number of Households in Debt to Central Hudson Skyrocketed) led regulators to pause shutoffs until April 2024. FTNs resumed in December 2023—not to immediately shut off customers, but to reopen access to financial assistance. As counterintuitive as it may sound, receiving an FTN, while stressful, is often the first step toward getting help with overdue bills.
What Happens After an FTN Is Issued?
An FTN means more than just a potential power loss. Under the Home Energy Fair Practices Act, it marks the beginning of a minimum 15-day notice period before shutoff can occur. As mentioned above, a DPA is typically offered five business days after an FTN is issued. If the terms are unaffordable, customers can call Central Hudson and ask if they qualify for a minimum payment agreement by submitting a financial statement. This step is crucial: DSS usually won’t provide assistance unless the customer is enrolled in a minimum agreement—or has no income.
Other programs—like HEAP, Emergency HEAP, and Central Hudson’s Bill Discount Program—do not require a payment agreement to apply. However, Central Hudson’s Good Neighbor Fund does require that a customer first default on a minimum payment agreement before qualifying.
Debt Relief or Debt Management? A Shifting Strategy
When we look at reconnection trends over time, a shift in outcomes emerges. In early 2020, about 23% of service restorations came from HEAP or DSS, while 28% were through DPAs. For customers in Central Hudson’s Energy Assistance Program (EAP), 62% of reconnections were through HEAP or DSS and 13% through DPAs. But by May 2025, only 1.1% of reconnections came from HEAP or DSS, while 52% were through DPAs. EAP data for the same period show 20% from HEAP or DSS and nearly 59% from DPAs.
This shift suggests a transition away from debt relief toward repayment plans that stretch out the debt over time. Across all customers, reconnections using HEAP or DSS decreased by 22 percentage points (from 23% to 1.1%), while those using DPAs increased by 24 percentage points (from 28% to 52%).
The Barriers to Public Assistance
Returning to the options available after receiving an FTN or being shut off—enter a DPA, seek public assistance, or pay in full—we see how limited the options truly are. Paying in full is unrealistic for most, and reconnection data shows public assistance rarely works in practice. As sociologist Dr. Diana Hernández documents in Powerless, energy assistance programs are often riddled with complexity. Limited funding, narrow eligibility rules, and a lack of transparency mean that even well-meaning programs can fail the people they’re designed to serve.
Some customers are excluded due to income thresholds that don’t reflect actual cost of living. Others never even hear about the programs in time. And for those who do qualify, the burden of applying—paperwork, deadlines, follow-ups—can be overwhelming when you’re already in crisis.
Closing Thoughts & What’s Next
In short, DPAs have become the only reliable path for most customers to avoid shutoff and restore service. In my next blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the trends and interactions between Central Hudson’s customers in arrears and the Deferred Payment Agreements that are supposed to assist them. If you need help navigating a Final Termination Notice or understanding your DPA, don’t hesitate to reach out. And! If you’re looking for a guaranteed way to save on your utility bills, you might benefit from our community solar program. We’d love to hear from you.