Power To The People: NH Public Utilities Commission To Eversource Customers: Drop Dead

By DONALD M. KREIS, Power to the People, InDepth NH

Power to the People is a column by Donald M. Kreis, New Hampshire’s Consumer Advocate. Kreis and his staff of four represent the interests of residential utility customers before the NH Public Utilities Commission and elsewhere.

Read your electric bill this month and weep, especially if you are an Eversource customer. But, as labor activist Joe Hill famously counseled, don’t mourn — organize!

Yes we need a mass mobilization in protest of the whopping big rate increase the Public Utilities Commission just granted Eversource. The fixed monthly charge on Everyone’s bill – which you pay every month regardless of how much juice you use – is going up from $15 to nearly $20.

But it’s even worse than that. The PUC ruled that Eversource’s requested increase is actually too small, so on its own initiative the Commission declared that this $20 charge will go up by another two bucks every August until the regulators declare otherwise.

How far could this go? The PUC gushed over Eversource witness Amparo Nieto and her “marginal cost-of-service” approach to figuring out how to turn the company’s annual revenue requirement into actual rates. Nieto recommended a fixed monthly charge of nearly $43.

Oh, and on the question of Eversource’s annual revenue requirement – the total amount the Company is supposed to collect via distribution charges in order to pay for its network of poles and wires – Did I mention that the PUC gave Eversource 98 percent of what it requested?

Before you take your frustration to the streets please check your electric bill. Unfortunately, energy charges – the price you pay per kilowatt-hour (kwh) for the actual electricity you use – is also going up. Specifically, Eversource’s default energy service rate is increasing sharply, to 11.2 cents per kwh.

All of the other utilities are following suit. Unitil’s rate will be 11.38 cents and Liberty’s $12.4 cents. The equivalent rate for the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative – known as Co-op Power – increases to 11.46 cents.

But wait. There’s more!

When community power aggregation took off in New Hampshire in 2022 and 2024, the hope was that these municipal programs could beat default energy service, and Co-op Power, on price. Which they have mostly done, until now.

As of August 1, the “Granite Basic” service from the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire will be between 13 and 14 cents per kwh, depending on which utility’s territory you’re in. For the next six months, your local utility is the better deal.

In my dream version of New Hampshire it would be really easy to switch among your utility’s default service, municipal aggregation (assuming you live in a city or town with such a program), and competitive energy suppliers that sell to individual customers. After all, by my estimate, we residential customers have been forced to fork over more than half a billion dollars for the privilege of retail electric choice.

I refer, of course, to stranded cost charges. When New Hampshire put an end to vertically integrated electric utilities, a process that began in 1996 with the passage of the Restructuring Act, the utilities did not just smile cheerfully, sell off their generation plants as required, and let their customers buy electricity from anyone who would sell it to them.

Nope. The utilities sued – in federal court. The litigation was eventually settled but by the time the dust had fully settled and the last of the plants were sold off, New Hampshire had paid more than $1.2 billion in stranded cost charges and residential customers were on the hook for about half the money.

Nevertheless you can’t just switch suppliers when the rates change on August 1. You must time your switch to coincide with your billing cycle, and the utilities are putting bills out every day.

So, if you want to change from, say, community power aggregation to utility default service, you can only do so as of the next billing cycle. And you have to get your request in, to your utility, your community power program, or your competitive supplier, at least two business days before the end of the billing cycle.

Calls and messages about this have been pouring into my office. People know that I am a fan of community power aggregation, so they want me to tell them why energy rates have spiked and why the aggregation programs are suddenly more expensive than the utilities are.

There are two reasons for the dismal price trend: December and January. Those are the two coldest months of the year and both fall within the six months covered by the new rates.

This past winter was unusually cold and wholesale electricity prices spiked alarmingly in December 2024 and January 2025. Though more and more solar generation is making its way onto the grid, natural gas is still the dominant way to produce electricity in New England. That’ a problem during a deep freeze because pipeline capacity is limited and those who use gas for heat have a priority claim on available supply.

Since last winter was dreadful the futures market for electricity this coming winter is also looking bleak. That’s reflected in the new retail energy rates for effect on August 1.

Last winter was particularly bad for the Community Power Coalition (CPCNH) of New Hampshire, which did not hedge as fully against wholesale price spikes. As a result, CPCNH depleted its reserves and must rebuild them via rates that are higher than the available alternatives.

In the midst of all this comes Governor Ayotte’s statement of July 28 that she was “disappointed” by the Commission’s decision in the Eversource rate case. Yeah, it’s basically a one-word reaction. But, given the Governor’s importance, her policy acumen, and the rarity with which she weighs in on utility matters, it’s welcome.

The Governor called for a regulatory process that is “transparent, accountable,” and one that “protects Granite Staters from rate hikes.” A good place to start on the transparency front would be the pro-utility propaganda in the first sentence of the PUC’s order.

In that lede sentence the PUC touted a “total bill increase of 2.5 percent.” That’s baloney. Eversource distribution rates are going up by 24 percent – well ahead of inflation – at exactly the same time energy charges are also skyrocketing. What an awful time to be a New Hampshire electric user, especially if your utility is Eversource.

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