New Hampshire House fails to override net metering veto
The New Hampshire House of Representatives recently failed to override Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of a bill that would have increased net metering limits.
In March, the New Hampshire Senate had voted 17-7 to override the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 159, legislation that would have increased the state net metering limit from 1 to 5 megawatts (MW). But on Sept. 16, the House failed to override the veto on a 207-130 vote.
This is not the first year that Gov. Sununu has vetoed a net metering bill. He has said taxpayers would have to pay millions of dollars if the bill were to pass.
The effects of COVID-19 on the economy have made electric companies and lawmakers think differently about the state’s energy future.
“As we all continue to face the challenges presented by the pandemic, it’s more important than ever that we pursue innovative solutions that lower costs for our customers, improve reliability and advance clean energy,” said William Hinkle, media relations manager with Eversource. “Distributed energy resources like solar play an important role in those efforts, and we work directly with customers and developers to facilitate its growth in New Hampshire.”
Eversource is New Hampshire’s largest electric utility, serving more than 519,000 homes and businesses in 211 cities and towns.
Hinkle added: “We’re focused on building a modern and more flexible smart grid that enables the interconnection of more solar and other clean energy resources to our system, while also ensuring that proposed projects can safely interconnect to our system without compromising safety, reliability or power quality for our customers.”
In his veto message, Gov. Sununu said that SB 159 is nearly identical to two bills that were vetoed and sustained in previous legislative sessions.
“The proponents of this bill claim to have made a compromise, when in fact it still would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in higher electric rates for our citizens,” Sununu said. “These costs would be felt most by low-income families and seniors in New Hampshire, and that is not acceptable.”
The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a New Hampshire organization that advocates for free markets and limited government, agrees with Gov. Sununu on this issue.
“New Hampshire has some of the highest electricity rates in the nation. Passage of SB 159 would have pushed rates even higher by forcing utilities to pay above-market rates for five times the amount of energy the state currently forces them to buy at above-market rates through net metering,” said Andrew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. “Lowering their electric bills is enough of an incentive for people to build small-scale solar arrays for personal or business use, especially as the technology has become more affordable. The state doesn’t need to rig the market to force ratepayers to subsidize these projects.”
The Consumer Energy Alliance commissioned a report on solar incentives in New Hampshire in 2018. The report found that existing incentives for residential solar photovoltaic systems (PV) are significant but utility-scale solar installations are less expensive to install and are incentivized at lower rates per watt than rooftop solar PV systems.
However, it also found that a single 6,100-watt direct owned rooftop system in New Hampshire received $23,254 in taxpayer and net metering incentives, or about $3.81 in incentives per watt, representing 118 percent of the actual cost of the system. The extra costs are usually paid for by non-solar utility customers.
According to Hinkle, there are currently 84 MWs of solar projects connected to the Eversource system in New Hampshire, with an additional 166 MWs as part of proposed projects that are either under construction or under review.
The company is also working with regulators and other stakeholders on a pilot project aimed at expanding solar access to low-income customers in New Hampshire. “We actively participated in discussions led by the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission to develop rules for new shared solar opportunities created by legislation that passed last year, bringing our experience with similar programs in Massachusetts and Connecticut to bear so that shared solar in the Granite State may be as successful as possible under the new rules,” Hinkle said.
The governor has said he would be open to considering “common ground” net metering legislation in the future that created smart clean energy opportunities for the state.
