Distant Dome: Electric Ratepayers Caught In Upward Spiral

By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome, InDepth NH

Benjamin Franklin’s noted idiom about two things that are inevitable, may need tweaking.

Along with death and taxes, today increasing electric bills should be considered inevitable as well.

Electric consumers in New Hampshire are about to be hit with significant increases for the cost of the power and for distribution and transmission as the long neglected infrastructure is being upgraded with the costs spread to all ratepayers in New England.

New Hampshire and New England have a history of some of the highest electric rates in the country for a number of reasons including the lack of native fuels like oil or natural gas. As one former state consumer advocate used to explain it, New England is the tailpipe of the electric system and everyone has added a charge along the line.

After Public Service of NH — now Eversource — went bankrupt and emerged as part of the Northeast Utilities group, the seven 4.5 percent yearly rate increases to pay off the cost of taking over the utility put New Hampshire at the top of the nation for electric rates and brought on the deregulation of the electric portion of the industry.

The state has long been dependent on fossil fuels to generate electricity and with the last coal-fired plant in New England in Bow, to oil and more recently natural gas to go along with the Seabrook Nuclear Plant.

The current presidential administration wants to ensure its oligarchical friends and funders, many of whom became multi-billionaires through the fossil fuel industry, continue to feed at the trickle-up trough draining money from the other 99 percent.

This administration is ending tax credits for solar panels and other alternative fuel sources as well as electric vehicles, and last week ordered a nearly complete wind generating project off the coast of Rhode Island to stop construction.

Wind farms have proliferated in other areas of the country and have provided considerable power at what are now stable and competitive prices.

Coupled with battery storage systems they are a more reliable power supply than in the past.

In New Hampshire, we are all too aware of the hunger for hydro generated power from Quebec in Massachusetts and the unsuccessful Northern Pass Transmission project, but with the growing demand for electricity in that province, Hydro Quebec is not the source of readily available cheap and non-fossil fuel generated power it once was.

At the same time, the once plentiful supplies of natural gas that were relatively cheap are drying up as more and more of the gas is turned into liquified natural gas and sold on the world market, making the price much more volatile here at home.

New Hampshire and New England are most dependent on natural gas to generate power and that is one of the reasons the price is going up and up and up.

Another cost generator is the lack of an adequate supply of natural gas particularly in the cold winter months when many homes and buildings are heated by natural gas and they are the priority during extended cold spells. Power generators have to turn to liquified natural gas to power their plants at much higher prices as they compete with the rest of the world, mostly Europe, for the commodity.

The inadequate supply had Gov. Kelly Ayotte calling for revisiting a mothballed proposed natural gas pipeline running from the natural gas rich Marcellus Shale under Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia to the Boston area.

The proposal was backed by several states including New Hampshire when Maggie Hassan was governor, but met strong resistance wherever the route was proposed and ultimately fell apart when electric utilities failed to agree to purchase the gas under guaranteed long-term contracts.

Never mind that it would take many years to engineer, site and work through the regulatory agencies in several states for a new pipeline project, but the guaranteed purchase issue is not likely to change as long as the transmission line through Maine to bring Hydro Quebec power to Maine and Massachusetts is viable as is another transmission line along western New England that is already permitted to carry more Hydro Quebec power.

With the current administration’s hostility to all but fossil fuel generated electricity and its carbon emissions further fueling global warming, the price of electricity has only one way to go and that is up.

Several bills passed by the Republican controlled legislature during the 2025 session cemented that scenario in place with a revised state energy plan putting the thumb on the fossil fuel scale and eliminating the state’s wind development agency.

At the same time, the Free State/Libertarian cohort in the legislature successfully pushed bills to encourage the development of data centers in the state.

One bill signed into law, would allow small, self-contained nuclear generating units to be used off grid and free of regulation by the Public Utilities Commission to power the potential data centers.

Data centers host the ICloud and other mega clouds, and are essential crypto currency transactions and the exploding AI industry.

The centers are proliferating around the country and in many cases are grouped together in states like Georgia, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Louisiana.

These data centers use a tremendous amount of electricity and also water to cool the computers with some proposed centers requiring a million gallons of water a day.

The centers are often located in areas with cheap electricity but often with scarce water supplies causing surrounding homes and businesses to lose their water supply or to render it unusable.

Because the centers require a tremendous amount of electricity, the electric distribution systems have to be upgraded and in most cases the cost is spread to the utilities’ other customers.

The massive use of electricity has in some cases disrupted the area grid and are also security threats.

There are no data centers in New Hampshire today, but the Free State/Libertarians in the legislature would like New Hampshire to be the region’s go to place for data centers.

By allowing the centers to operate without regulation opens Pandora’s Box as yet one more group escapes the socialization of costs for the rest of the people and businesses in New Hampshire. The same group is pushing that scenario in other areas as well like education and health care.

At a time when electricity costs are skyrocketing and the current administration is cutting off alternative sources for generation, the state does not need a new questionable industry setting up shop and disrupting the system further and putting pressure on the water supply.

And the already exploding electric prices will shoot up like a Space X rocket.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.