A breakup doubled Andrea Guinns living expenses overnight. Saddled with the bills and rent for the apartment she once shared with her ex in Queens, she fell behind on payments to Consolidated Edison, the $29 billion investor-owned utility that enjoys a monopoly on electricity in New York City.

By February, the 33-year-old said, she paid off all but $74 of the nearly $600 she owed the utility and stayed current on her monthly bills. But one night last month, she came home and discovered Con Edison had cut her power off anyway. She charged her dead phone on a nearly drained laptop battery and called the company, demanding it turn the power back on after failing to give proper notice. Staying awake by candlelight, she finally reached an operator at 1 a.m. The utility restored electricity the next day.

So as the coronavirus outbreak cascaded into a full-blown economic and public health crisis this week, Guinn was relieved when New York regulators said Friday that electrical and gas utilities across the state had agreed to stop disconnecting services for nonpayment.

It shouldnt take a pandemic for people to realize that energy should be a right, said Guinn, 33, who works in Manhattan as a graphic designer. Even briefly having that interrupted made me realize how precarious our system is its terrifying.