First, I want to discuss last week's Northeast, which impacted approximately 525,000 customers across our service territory.
Our Eastern Massachusetts customers sustained the greatest damage with more than 450,000 customers impacted.
That's over 35% of Eversource's customers in Eastern Massachusetts.
We have 9,300 dedicated employees, all focused on providing the best possible experience for our customers.
I believe that's critical for us to be out front, visible, transparent and collaborative during these major events, something that has been difficult to do as we all work in a remote pandemic restricted environment for the last 18 months.
Eversource is fully committed to providing each and every one of our 4.3 million electric, natural gas and water customers across New England with exceptional service.
We continue to expect commercial operation of the 12 turbines, 130-megawatt project by the end of 2023.
Finally, our largest project, Sunrise Wind, which will supply 924 megawatts to New York.
The Biden administration continues to show significant support for offshore wind in both words and actions, targeting 30,000 megawatts of offshore turbines by 2030.
They can hold at least 4,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines, far more than the approximately 760 megawatts we currently have under contract.
We did not bid into Massachusetts September RFP for up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind.
In Connecticut, we are partnering with the state on more than $200 million upgrade of the New London State Pier.
Onshore construction is underway, which you can see from either I-95 or Amtrak's nearby Boston to New York line.
Our GAAP earnings were $0.82 per share for the quarter, including the $0.19 charge associated with the Connecticut electric rate settlement and the $0.01 charge relating to our integration of Eversource gas of Massachusetts.
Our electric transmission business earned $0.40 per share in the third quarter of 2021 compared with earnings of $0.36 in the third quarter of last year, reflecting a higher level of necessary investment in our transmission facilities.
Our electric distribution business, excluding charges related to the Connecticut rate settlement, earned $0.62 per share in the third quarter of 2021 compared with earnings of $0.60 in the third quarter of 2020.
Storm-related expenses remain a headwind for us, costing us $0.01 a share in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 and a total of $0.05 a share more in 2021 than last year on a year-to-date basis.
Our natural gas distribution business lost $0.06 per share in the third quarter of 2021 compared with a loss of $0.04 in the third quarter of 2020.
Given the seasonal nature of customer usage, natural gas utilities tend to record losses over the summer months, our natural gas segment now -- our natural gas segment loss is now about 50% larger as a result of the acquisition of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts assets back in last October.
So Eversource Gas of Massachusetts lost about $0.03 per share in the quarter.
Just to some investors underestimated the $0.14 per share positive contribution from EGMA in the first quarter.
As I said, EGMA lost $0.03 in the quarter, and it was not part of the Eversource family in the third quarter of 2020.
Our water distribution business, Aquarion, earned $0.05 per share in the third quarter of 2021 compared with earnings of $0.07 in the third quarter of 2020.
The $17.5 million that we earned at our water segment in the third quarter of 2021 is more on -- a more normalized level for that segment.
Our parent and other earned $0.01 per share in the third quarter of 2021 compared with earnings of $0.03 in the third quarter of 2020.
Our consolidated rate was 24.8% in the third quarter of 2021 compared with 23.7% in the third quarter of 2020.
You can see that we have reiterated the $3.81 to $3.93 earnings per share guidance that we issued in February.
That range excludes the $0.25 per share of charges related to our Connecticut settlement and storm-related bill credits that we recognized in the first quarter of this year as well as the transition costs related to the integration of the former Columbia Gas of Massachusetts assets into the Eversource system.
Also, we project long-term earnings per share growth in the upper half of the range of 5% to 7% through 2025.
That growth is largely driven by our $17 billion five-year capital program and continued strong operational effectiveness throughout the business.
And through September 30, our capital expenditures totaled $2.3 billion.
The settlement calls for $65 million in rate credits to CL&P customers over the course of December of 2021 in January of 2022.
And that's about -- in total, $35 per customer over the two months for the typical residential customer.
It provides another $10 million of shareholder pay benefits to customers who are most in need of help with their energy bills.
Further, as part of the settlement, we will withdraw our superior court appeal of the $28.4 million total storm-related credits that customers first saw in their bills in September of 2021.
As prior of the settlement, the 90 basis point indefinite reduction of CL&P's distribution ROE will not be implemented.
Additionally, the current 9.25% ROE and capital structure will remain in effect.
This will avoid an appeal of the interim rate reduction and will withdraw the pending appeal of the 90 basis point reduction.
Since CL&P's last distribution rate case was effective in May of 2018, the actual -- the company's actual ROEs have generally ranged between 8.6% and 9%, with the latest reported quarter at 8.6%.
We'll continue to provide superior service to our nearly 1.3 million CL&P customers will also be effectively managing our operations.
The program is planned to launch January one of 2022, and will support the state's target of having at least 125,000 electric vehicles on the road by the end of 2025.
To date, we'll need to replace more than 800,000 meters over the next -- to do that, we'll have to replace over 800,000 meters over the next several years.
Altogether, moving CL&P fully to AMI would involve a capital investment of nearly $500 million we estimate in meters and communication related technologies.
We've submitted nearly $200 million grid modernization plan to regulators for the 2022 through 2025 period.
It would involve about $575 million of capital investments over multi-years from 2022 through 2027.
The extension would provide investments of nearly $200 million over the next four years, with about $68 million being capital investments.
Although, these facilities provide us with -- altogether, these facilities provide us with storage connected to our distribution system of nearly 6.5 billion cubic feet.
And as of now, we expect the commodity portion of natural gas bills to be approximately 20% higher than last winter's extremely low levels due to COVID, prices were pretty low last year and well below levels we experienced a decade ago after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana.
Overall, including the distribution charge, we expect natural gas heating bills will be up about 15% on average.
That's about $30 a month to the average for a typical heating customer compared to last winter.
While a 15% increase is significant it is far less than the -- more than 30% increase that propane heating customers are facing and really a 60% increase that's out there for home heating oil as the alternatives for customers.
Between 60% and 65% of our electric load is bought by customers directly from third-party suppliers.
For the 35% to 40% of our load that continues to buy through our franchises, Connecticut Light & Power, NSTAR Electric and Public Service in New Hampshire, this is mostly residential load and customers will see higher prices, but they are partially protected by the fact that we contract for power in multiple tranches throughout the year.
Due to wintertime natural gas constraints in New England, our customers normally see $0.015 to $0.02 per kilowatt hour increase in their retail electric prices in January, an increase that usually reverses as we move into the summer.
This January customers in Massachusetts and Connecticut elected to experience an additional $0.02 to $0.03 increase due to higher gas prices driving power production.
This would be an additional $20, $25 per month for a typical residential customer compared with last winter.
And we've redoubled our efforts again to urge customers to take advantage of the more than $500 million that we have available on energy efficiency initiatives that we provide customers throughout our states each year.

Summary:
Our GAAP earnings were $0.82 per share for the quarter, including the $0.19 charge associated with the Connecticut electric rate settlement and the $0.01 charge relating to our integration of Eversource gas of Massachusetts.
You can see that we have reiterated the $3.81 to $3.93 earnings per share guidance that we issued in February.