Solar customers and clean energy advocates are waiting to see if New Hampshire will continue its system for compensating customers who share excess power on the grid. 

State regulators at a recent hearing seemed unconvinced about the policy’s benefits, despite support from utilities, customers, and hundreds of residents who submitted public comments on a proposed extension. 

“This commission is highly skeptical of anything involving energy efficiency or clean energy, and focused almost solely on cost,” said Nick Krakoff, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in New Hampshire. 

These compensation plans, generally referred to as net metering, are widely considered one of the most effective policies for encouraging more solar adoption. Recently, however, several states have changed or considered changing their programs, as utilities object that the policies are too costly and some politicians and policymakers push for more purely market-based approaches. 

New Hampshire’s net metering rules haven’t been modified since they were established in 2017. The state’s public utilities commission opened a case to consider the question of whether and how to adjust the rules in September 2022. A year into the proceedings, the state’s major electric utilities — Eversource, Liberty Utilities, and Unitil — came out in support of continuing the existing system of net metering, despite the tendency of utilities nationwide to consistently push for lower net metering rates. The move was a welcome surprise for environmental advocates. 

“If you don’t have a compensation rate that’s high enough, you’re not going to have customers that are going to want to invest in solar panels or other renewable energy,” Krakoff said.

Striking an agreement

In early August, a diverse coalition including the utilities, the Conservation Law Foundation, Clean Energy New Hampshire, Granite State Hydropower Association, Standard Power of America, and Walmart reached a settlement agreement about the future of the policy. 

The agreement calls for the state to keep the current net metering structure in place for two years; at the end of two years, utilities would propose time-of-use rates for net metering, so the compensation rate more closely matches the real-time value of the power being sent into the grid. Also, any projects that join the net metering program during those two years will receive the same compensation for 20 years before transitioning into whatever new system is created by then (currently the compensation ends in 2040). 

An influx of public comments has also reflected wide support for the tenets of the agreement. Nearly 450 comments were submitted since the beginning of the year, more than Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, has ever seen in a public utilities case, he said. The vast majority urge the commission to maintain the current net metering system. 

Peterborough resident Brian Stiefel was among those who filed comments. He and his wife installed 37 solar panels on their home in 2021, at a cost of $51,000. Though the solar doesn’t fully cover their electric bills, it provides $2,000 to $3,000 in savings per year, in large part due to net metering. 

“A big part of the decision to do this was the fact that the state would approve us for net metering,” Stiefel said in an interview. “If that’s going to change it could have a significant financial impact on everybody who has panels and is set up with net metering.”

An uncertain path forward

However, clean energy advocates say they have seen some signs in recent months that the commission might not be paying much attention to the benefits the system creates, while seeking out evidence that net metering creates a cost burden for consumers who aren’t part of the program. 

“The concern is that the chair is looking for a cost shift and is going to do whatever it takes to find one,” Evans-Brown said. 

Last spring, the commissioner requested a series of records in the case, several focused on gathering information about other states’ net metering programs — information that did not seem relevant to the decisions needed in New Hampshire, Evans-Brown said. The commission also requested, in a different docket, information about stranded cost recovery, which it then placed into the record on the net metering case as well, a move energy advocates interpreted as an attempt to focus on costs to the exclusion of benefits.

Then, in hearings on August 20 and 22, the commissioners asked questions that seemed focused on finding costs being passed on to consumers, even though there is simply no such evidence on the record, Krakoff said.

Advocates’ concerns are magnified by the commission’s history: In 2021, the commission drastically reduced funding for the state’s energy efficiency rebate and incentives. Though the utilities, consumer advocates, and environmental groups had come to an agreement to raise funding for the programs, the commission claimed that the program would burden consumers and that the state should focus on promoting market-based energy efficiency services. 

Current commission chair Daniel Goldner was one of the commissioners who signed the energy efficiency decision. During his confirmation hearing earlier that year, Goldner expressed skepticism about climate science, and advocates raised concerns about his lack of experience in the energy field.

“They expressed strong skepticism of energy efficiency and actually gutted the program,” Krakoff said, comparing that case to the present-day net metering proceedings. “It’s very concerning.”

Now advocates, homeowners, and other stakeholders can only wait to see what the commission decides and when they decide it. An order could come by the end of the year, said Evans-Brown, or the commissioners could decide to push the matter well into the new year — there are no deadlines set on the process. 

Should the commission in some way reject the settlement, there is still hope the legislature would take action to protect net metering. As part of the proceeding, state Sens. Kevin Avard, Howard Pearl, and David Watters submitted a letter explaining their belief that reducing net metering compensation would be against the goals of the legislature. 

“It is the intent of the legislature to preserve a viable net metering program in the state of New Hampshire, and we will take action to do so if necessary,” they wrote.

Resolving the question through legislative action, however, would leave the matter open and undecided for even longer, making it harder to encourage solar development in the state, advocates noted. 

“We were expecting this to be a challenging docket when this was first announced,” Evans-Brown said. “It’s frustrating, but not surprising.”

In net metering case, New Hampshire regulators focus on costs while ignoring benefits, advocates say is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A recently signed New Hampshire law makes significant changes to the operations of the state’s Renewable Energy Fund, directing money to help towns and cities develop municipal solar projects and ending a residential solar rebate program that was generally viewed as deeply flawed. 

“The previously existing program had sort of run its course,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs in the state energy department.

The Renewable Energy Fund, created in 2007, is a pool of money the state uses to support renewable and thermal energy initiatives through grants and rebates. It is funded by annual compliance payments made by electric service providers that failed to buy the legally mandated proportion of their power from renewable sources in the previous year. 

The sum the fund collects can vary widely from year to year, ranging from as low as $1.3 million in 2009 to $19.1 million in 2011. More recently, revenue has hovered around $7 million. 

This money is then allocated across several programs including those supporting solar hot water heating, low-and-moderate income community solar, and wood pellet boilers and furnaces for residential, commercial, and industrial customers. 

Advancing municipal solar

The new funding for municipal solar projects represents the next step for an approach just getting underway in the state. 

Installing solar power can allow a municipality to both cut carbon emissions and realize significant savings on their energy bills. These savings can be used to cut property taxes or to provide additional support or services for residents. Until recently, however, there was little state or federal support for municipal solar. At the same time, getting a municipality to agree to the upfront costs has always been challenging. 

“There’s a variety of competing factors for property tax revenue,” Elliott said. “It can be hard to get a warrant article passed to invest the money to purchase a solar array for town buildings.”

The state began tackling the problem this year with the Municipal Solar Grant Program, which is using a $1.6 million federal grant, part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to help cities and towns install solar arrays on municipal property. Lower-income communities that intend to retain complete ownership of their solar system will be eligible for grants up to $200,000; municipalities that don’t meet these criteria can request grants up to $120,000.

Though the program is just getting started — the application period is open until August 1 — the opportunity has already sparked wide interest from municipal governments. Community liaisons for the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire have identified roughly 50 cities and towns likely to apply for a share of the limited funding. 

“There’s been a huge response,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire. “That shows this is a good space to be spending the money in.”

The new legislation calls for funding to be allocated to a new municipal solar program this year, with the sum likely to be announced in late August or early September. Then, before the money can be offered to cities and towns, the state will have to design a new system. The new incentive will be inspired and informed by the program now launching, Elliott said. 

“We’re certainly going to take feedback, have stakeholder sessions,” he said. “And that will help refine what this program looks like.”

Replacing residential incentives

The bill also terminates the state’s rebate program for residential solar and wind installations, an incentive that was widely thought to be ineffective.

The program offered rebates of up to $1,000 to a limited number of households each year. In fiscal 2023, rebates totalling about $424,000 were issued. 

The program used a lottery system to determine what order rebate applications would be processed in each year; applicants closer to the end of the list might not end up receiving any rebate if the funds ran out before they made it to the top of the list. That uncertainty meant the program was doing little to spur additional solar development, Evans-Brown said. 

“It’s almost by definition not getting projects done: If you can’t know for sure if you’re getting rebate, it’s not factoring it into the purchasing decision,” he said. “When we asked residential solar installers if the rebate was helpful they said no.”

The program also accepted applications from any household with a solar array installed after 2012 that has not yet received a rebate, diminishing its impact on new solar development even further. 

“You’re not actually helping to develop the solar market at that point,” Elliott said. 

Though the recent law eliminates this rebate, lawmakers were clear during hearings on the bill that they want to see a replacement residential incentive developed. No plans are yet in the works for such a program, and it is unclear what the timeline would be for designing a new incentive from scratch, Elliott said. Furthermore, the law does not require a new program be enacted.

Elliott, however, has every intention of making sure a replacement program comes to be, he said.

“I made a commitment in public saying, ‘Yes, we are going to do this,’” he said, “and I certainly feel beholden to that.”

New Hampshire law provides new solar incentives for cities, drops ineffective consumer rebate program is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The first publicly available community solar project in New Hampshire hopes to pave the way for more such developments in a state where energy policies have made them challenging to complete.

The small southern New Hampshire town of Jaffrey is working with ReVision Energy to develop the array atop a former municipal landfill, with the goal of coming online in 2025. The town will receive annual lease payments for use of the land, and residents and others in the Eversource utility territory will be able to buy shares of the project, lowering their electricity bills and supporting the environmental benefits of renewable energy.

“It’s the perfect use of land that can’t do anything else,” said Jaffrey town manager Jon Frederick. 

At the same time, planners hope the project helps demonstrate the potential for community solar in New Hampshire and spark policy changes that would make the concept more financially feasible in the future.

Community solar challenges

New Hampshire authorized the development of community solar in 2013, but only small-scale projects serving specific communities or neighborhoods have ever been built. The state’s energy policies have made larger, publicly available projects financially unworkable, even as other New England states have actively incentivized such projects by lowering logistical barriers and offering financial subsidies, said developers and clean energy advocates. 

“The problem with community solar in New Hampshire is that the rate of reimbursement is much lower than the rate in all the surrounding states,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of advocacy group Clean Energy New Hampshire. 

At the heart of the problem are the state’s net metering rules. Net metering is a system that lets consumers offset the cost of power drawn from the grid by generating their own energy, often using solar panels. In New Hampshire, a solar system smaller than 100 kilowatts receives a credit worth 100% of the cost of transmission and the electricity itself and 25% of the cost of distribution. Systems between 100 kilowatts and 1 megawatt receive credit only for the power itself. Only municipal users can claim any credit for projects over 1 megawatt. 

At the same time, community solar projects have higher administrative costs, as they need to track and reconcile the use of dozens or even hundreds of consumers. Traditionally, the net metering rates have not been high enough for community solar projects to make financial sense. 

The lack of predictability is also a barrier: Electricity supply from Eversource in New Hampshire, for example, is currently priced at 8.29 cents per kilowatt-hour, down from 20 cents per kilowatt-hour over the same period last year. And the number changes every six months as the utilities update their rates. 

“It is so volatile,” Evans-Brown said. “When you try to do the financial models, you’re kind of taking a bet.”

Overcoming obstacles in Jaffrey

In Jaffrey, ReVision is taking advantage of evolving policies and using several strategies it hopes will overcome these obstacles. 

In 2019, state legislation pushed by ReVision simplified the billing process for community solar customers. Previously, these consumers would receive a bill from the utility for their full month’s electricity use, as well as a payment from the solar operator for their share of the power generated. The new rules combined the processes, crediting the solar generation directly to a customer’s electricity bill. That streamlining was just enough to get things moving in Jaffrey, said Dan Weeks, ReVision’s vice president of business development. 

“That was a big barrier in the past,” he said. “With that administrative progress we felt we were far enough to take this big step.”

The project deals with the size limit on net metered projects by keeping its AC capacity just below the 1 megawatt mark, so it remains eligible. 

The company decided to sell shares in the development rather than opening it up to subscribers, a choice that creates more value for consumers, who get to own all the power produced and the associated tax credits. The idea is that consumers will receive low- or no-cost power even as retail electricity power prices increase, creating savings that will pay for the initial investment, and then some.

Historically, however, it was difficult to make those numbers pencil out because of the combination of low net metering rates and frequently changing power prices. Indeed, the current supply price of 8.29 cents per kilowatt-hour would not be enough to keep the project afloat. ReVision is banking on U.S. Energy Information Administration projections that power prices will go up in coming years, creating greater savings for shareholders.

“There will definitely be a different rate at the time it is turned on,” Weeks said. “We feel pretty confident that individuals will save regardless.”

An ongoing difficulty remains, however: State law requires the total consumption of the community solar group members be equal to or greater than production of the solar farm. However, many shareholders are interested in buying a stake that is larger than their consumption so the solar credits will offset their entire energy bill — the delivery of the power as well as the electricity itself. That leaves ReVision with an unbalanced equation.

This dilemma is likely an unintended side effect of the way net metering rules have evolved in the state, Weeks said. ReVision is in talks with legislators about how they might be able to change the law to remove this obstacle, a move that would benefit both the Jaffrey project and future community solar plans.

“We have willing legislators who want to address it, so the program can realize its intended goal,” Weeks said.

If a change in law does not come through, ReVision will look into partnering with nonprofit groups or municipalities that might be interested in buying smaller amounts of power to offset some, but not all, of their consumption, which would help rebalance the legally required equation. 

As the plan comes together, others in the New England solar space will be watching, Evans-Brown said. 

“The thing that’s exciting about ReVision doing this is it’s kind of a trial to see if we can make this work,” he said.

New Hampshire’s first open community solar project moves forward despite state policy barriers is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A group of New England utilities plans to seek federal funding for a regional energy data platform that would make it easier for consumers and contractors to estimate potential savings from efficiency upgrades or new electric technologies. 

Clean energy advocates see this kind of service as key to supporting the rollout of Inflation Reduction Act rebates and, more broadly, to controlling costs and demand on a lower-carbon power grid. 

Energy providers Unitil, Eversource and Liberty Utilities are working with several subsidiaries and state groups and agencies to propose the new data platform to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) grant program, created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

Their $29 million data hub concept, with half the funding requested from the Department of Energy, builds off a similar state-level platform that’s been in the works in New Hampshire since 2019. Proponents say federal funding is needed in part to encourage that state’s regulators to give final approval for the project. 

Launched over the next four years, the regional data hub would provide standardized access to “very minute usage information” for millions of gas and electric customers and third-party service providers in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts, according to Unitil. 

“With this data more readily available, customers could better understand their energy consumption, which would help them make decisions about energy conservation steps they may want to take at home or in the workplace,” Unitil said in a statement. “For instance, the information could be used to obtain a price quote from a rooftop solar provider, a competitive supplier to receive a price estimate, or a storage provider to determine the appropriate size of behind-the-meter battery storage.”

‘An incredibly silly manual process’

Multi-utility data platforms currently exist in Texas and New York, both states with unified electric grids, proponents said — but in New England and many other places, customers’ data access is inconsistent. 

In a concept paper on their data hub proposal filed with the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission earlier this year, the Northeast utilities say costs for efficiency projects and clean energy upgrades, known as distributed energy resources or DERs, can be inflated by the “idiosyncratic processes” and “bespoke electronic interfaces” needed to work with each customer’s data. 

“Today, DER providers pay as much as $300,000 annually for screen-scraping programs to extract customer electric data from bill PDFs, while others install monitoring packages with their solar and storage applications that are functionally duplicative of the utility’s advanced meters, driving up costs by $15,000 or more per installation,” the proposal says. 

To estimate cost savings in a quote for rooftop solar, for example, a homeowner may have to provide a year’s worth of paper or electronic bills for their prospective installer to compile and analyze by hand — an “incredibly silly manual process,” said Sam Evans-Brown, the executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, a nonprofit that’s participating in the regional data hub proposal. 

“And that’s just the single homeowner level — think about a multi-family housing project, where you have forty, fifty, a hundred units, each with their own electric bill,” he said. “It’s just a total nightmare.” 

An automated system would access customers’ data on demand in a standardized format and could spit out expected project savings at essentially the push of a button, he said. Contractors he’s spoken with, he said, call this approach “transformational for the way that we interact with customers.” 

The data hub could also support energy dashboards, especially for environmental justice areas, to help visualize progress toward climate targets with a goal of “reducing the energy burden for historically disadvantaged communities,” said Eversource spokesperson Sarah Paduano in a statement. 

“By breaking down the walls of historically utility-housed and owned data, Unitil believes this would remove a significant barrier for a variety of stakeholders that would be able to leverage the data in a meaningful way and towards advancing an equitable clean energy transition,” Unitil’s statement said.

Data for a more responsive grid

Estimated savings from individual energy projects aren’t just nice to have, said Michael Murray, president of Mission Data Coalition, another nonprofit working on the hub project — they are often required. Certain Inflation Reduction Act rebates are only offered to projects that can prove at least a 20% energy savings. 

“The legislation was really intended to be the first sort of fusion between making an efficiency project a smart grid asset,” Murray said. “It’s no longer just, ‘efficiency is in its own silo and all you care about is annual energy savings.’ The question is, how does it become interactive and part of a ‘virtual power plant’ kind of concept?”

Better data on individual projects could help customers access savings from new rate designs that incentivize less usage at times of peak demand, the proposal says, improving resilience and lowering costs on a more variable, renewables-powered grid. 

“Energy data is increasingly going to become the currency of a modern grid,” said Evans-Brown. “It’s really difficult to manage our peaks if you have no idea where they’re coming from, like what’s causing them all the way down to the consumer level.” 

Without standardized, streamlined access to energy data, Murray said, contractors trying to work with IRA rebates in states that choose to offer them will face a costly and time-consuming burden of iterating individualized manual processes thousands of times. 

“(The IRA) is going to touch millions of American homes. Each one of these is multiple data requests and processing. And so we need to figure out a way to do it in a streamlined way,” he said. Otherwise, “all that federal money gets drained into stupid overhead as opposed to actually delivering value for people.” 

Not every New England state or utility is participating in the grant proposal. Connecticut-based Avangrid, with subsidiaries like Central Maine Power or CMP, is one that declined to join. 

CMP received a $30 million GRIP grant in the program’s first round last year for technology to reduce the frequency and impact of power outages, and plans to seek additional GRIP funding on its own this year. 

“Our decision for round two was to focus on reliability and load capacity grid improvement projects in Maine, particularly those that impact disadvantaged communities,” said spokesperson Jon Breed in a statement. “We are aware of the concept of the Regional Joint Utility Energy Data Hub and will be monitoring the performance of the program if it receives funding.”

For Murray, the long-term goal is a data platform that covers the entire territory of ISO-New England, the six states’ regional grid manager. He said utilities — and their customers — that don’t get on board, if the project moves forward, could risk becoming siloed and left behind in older systems.

“The whole industry is moving towards an automated system, which New Hampshire is building,” he said. “That’s where we ultimately need to go.”

New England utilities plan ‘transformational’ data platform to make it easier to calculate energy savings is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

When conveyor belt manufacturer Wire Belt opened its new facility in Bedford, N.H., last fall, the company looked forward to saving money and fighting climate change with a 2,400-panel solar array installed on the roof. 

Four months later, however, Wire Belt’s solar panels lie dormant as the company waits for its utility to hook the project up to the grid. It’s an example of the often long and unpredictable interconnection delays facing large solar projects in New Hampshire and nationwide. 

Wire Belt president Jon Greer was among those who testified at a January hearing in support of state legislation that aims to streamline this connection process, a proposal that is receiving broad support from climate advocates and the business community, including companies like Wire Belt, whose monthly power bills approach $60,000. 

Sen. Kevin Avard, chairman of the Senate energy and natural resources committee, who introduced the bill, said it’s time to fix the system. 

“We just want to make sure that the people who took advantage of solar have the opportunity to utilize the good clean energy, hopefully at a lower price,” Avard said.

Currently, utilities determine their own process for approving interconnection requests for projects larger than 100 kilowatts. The bill calls for the New Hampshire Department of Energy to draft and assess rules that would create a uniform policy for all utilities to use, with the goal of making the process smoother and more predictable. 

“Right now there are no guardrails, no timelines, there’s no real obligation to hurry,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. “This is where, if you’re a regulated monopoly, regulators are supposed to step in.” 

Wire Belt is not the only business feeling discouraged. Russ Greenlaw, senior vice president of sales for the Associated Grocers of New England, explained at the hearing that the delays make it difficult for members to commit to spending money on solar developments when it is so unclear when they would be able to see benefits to their bottom line. 

“There’s just a complete lack of clarity and predictability around the process,” said Heidi Kroll, director of government relations for New Hampshire law firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell.

Widespread challenges

Interconnection issues are not limited to New Hampshire. Though each state has its own approach, the basics are the same: New renewable energy projects that want to hook up to the grid have to submit interconnection requests to the utility. The utility evaluates the project and its impact on the grid, then decides whether any upgrades are necessary to accommodate the new power source before approving it for connection. 

Residential arrays and other small projects are often approved quickly: Eversource, which serves 71% of New Hampshire’s households, expects to receive as many as 5,000 interconnection requests this year and to approve 95% of them within days. 

However, in New Hampshire and many other states, the surge in larger renewable energy developments has created logjams in this process as utilities try to figure out how much the grid can bear and how to accommodate additional power — how to balance the benefits of renewable energy supply with the strain the new generators put on the grid. 

“Interconnection is one of the biggest barriers right now to getting clean energy done,” Evans-Brown said. 

And most states do not yet have systems in place that are keeping up with these challenges. Freeing the Grid, a nonprofit initiative that grades states on their interconnection policies, found that only six states — none in New England — and the District of Columbia scored above a C. New Hampshire was among the 17 states earning a D. 

Eversource, New Hampshire’s largest utility, has a queue of just under 100 projects needing further study. Unitil, which serves about 10% of the state’s customers, has four larger projects in the waiting line — three since the fall and one since late spring — representing the significant majority of the pending load. 

New Hampshire has taken early steps to address its interconnection problem. In July 2022, the legislature asked the state to investigate and make recommendations. The resulting report, released in December 2023, concluded that there are indeed “considerable technical, operating, processing, and procedural challenges,” to adding growing amounts of renewable energy to the grid. 

The report called for the creation of two working groups — one focused on technical and engineering problems and solutions, and another for administrative and process issues — to further assess the situation and provide solutions. 

The legislation

For many stakeholders, however, this proposed approach is not nearly robust enough, prompting a bipartisan group of legislators to back the current bill. 

The original bill would have required the state to begin a rulemaking process within 45 days and adopt final rules by the end of 2024. This timeline, however, would not have been possible within the department’s rulemaking process, said Joshua Elliott, director of the energy department’s division of policy and programs. The legislation was then amended to call for “a proceeding to examine and assess draft rules to be adopted” rather than a final rulemaking. 

“The bill as introduced was not implementable,” Elliott said. “As amended, the bill both gives the department the resources to accomplish this task and a timeline that is implementable.”

Some advocates, however, aren’t convinced that the amended bill has enough specificity and force to make the needed difference. 

“It is not explicitly clear that a rulemaking is required, and it doesn’t give any deadline,” Evans-Brown said. “It was a valuable hearing — that’s a big step — but I am very skeptical that the [department] is taking this problem seriously.”

The Senate’s energy and natural resources committee voted unanimously in mid-February to recommend passage of the amended bill, and legislators are eager to see it passed and hopefully help ease a longstanding problem. 

“What’s the pause, what’s the hiccup?” Avard said. “It’s nothing complicated.”

Editor’s note: The headline on this article was updated to clarify that interconnection delays are only affecting projects over 100 kW.

Large New Hampshire solar projects face delays trying to connect to power grid  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.