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.

Imagine if you could save money on your electric bill by using a service provider to adjust your thermostats, switch your dishwasher or dryer on or off, or activate or deactivate your home electric vehicle charger, all as demand on the grid fluctuates.

Consider the possibility of a deep energy-efficiency retrofit for your home or business, specially tailored to optimize your savings based on how and when you use electricity.

Picture a system that allows your neighborhood, or even your whole town, to optimize its electricity usage – and even energy generation, thanks to rooftop and backyard solar — based on real-time information from individual meters about who’s using what and who’s producing what.

It was possibilities like that that led the Office of the Consumer Advocate to champion legislation six years ago to encourage the development of a statewide utility customer data platform.  It was one of only two energy-related bills that Governor Sununu did not veto in 2019, the last time Democrats controlled both chambers of the General Court.

The idea is to create a central clearinghouse for the kind of granular usage data that makes possible such money-saving innovations.  The technology does not require a statewide data hub, but the economics do.

We’re talking about service providers that do not enjoy monopolies. We are not their captive customers in the same way we are stuck with Eversource, Liberty, the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, and Unitil.  If these providers can ‘ping’ a single platform for usage data from customers (who, of course, must give permission), it’s suddenly economical for them to recruit and serve homes and businesses.

The 2019 bill instructed Eversource, Liberty, and Unitil to work with stakeholders to develop the platform, under the aegis of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).  As someone directly involved in drafting the bill, I wanted the PUC involved to make sure the utilities did not thwart the effort in light of the possibility that such a platform could lower their revenue and erode their dominance over the electric grid.

But, as we got to work in 2020, the utilities surprised me.

With Unitil leading the way, the utilities proved themselves willing and even eager to come up with a plan for the statewide data platform.  They even agreed to the creation of a governance council to oversee the whole thing, designed to provide stakeholders (including representatives of companies that could use to platform to do cool stuff for customers) real influence and oversight.

Given this success story, why is there no utility customer data platform, almost six years later?  Two reasons:  regulatory over-reach, and politics.

As we shepherded the bill through the Legislature six years ago, it became clear that the House in particular was concerned about the potential cost of the data platform.  So the legislation gave the PUC the right to pause the project if the prospective benefits did not justify the pricetag.

The PUC has used this as a pretext for micromanaging everything the data platform governance council does: hiring consultants, creating specifications, drafting requests for proposals, you name it.  Chaired by a retired business executive with a Type A personality and no prior background in public utilities, the PUC has lost sight of the difference between regulating a utility and running a utility (or, in this instance, a consortium of utilities collaborating with stakeholders).

Thus the agency has slowed the progress of the data platform to a crawl.  The data platform docket is now the oldest active case at the PUC, by far.

Now the PUC has found common purpose with politicians who likewise do not seem to like the idea of such successful collaborations among utilities, customer representatives, and other stakeholders.  On April 10 the House by a vote of 209-165 adopted a bill (HB 723) to repeal the data platform statute altogether.

The timing was regrettable in two respects.

First, this happened during the same session in which the House adopted its controversial version of the state’s biannual budget.  There have been several significant energy-related developments in the Legislature this session, but attention has consistently been focused elsewhere in these divisive times.

Second, the repeal bill passed just as the data platform governance council was finally set to issue its RFPs (requests for proposals) to potential builders of the statewide utility customer data platform. That caused the PUC to pounce, the very following day.

In an April 11 order, the PUC thanked the governance council for submitting its RFPs and even found them to be “consistent with prior orders” – which, as noted above, have been numerous and micromanagement-rich.  But then the PUC proclaimed that it would “stay the RFP issuance for a period of sixty days to allow for further development of HB 723.”

To paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, this is regulatory over-reach run riot.  The PUC – which is not a court, and does not have the power to issue injunctions or the like — simply lacks the authority to issue such a stay.

The PUC professes concern for the time and expense to be incurred by the governance council and potential bidders. I think the PUC is really just trying to prevent further progress on data platform development that could discourage the Senate from adopting the bill or, potentially, Governor Ayotte from signing it.

Commission on Government Efficiency please take note:  This is an example of a regulatory agency that can’t stand the idea of stakeholders collaborating on consensus-based innovation that will promote innovation, more reliance on unregulated market transactions, and less reliance on regulation.

Technically the fate of HB 723 shouldn’t matter. If the legislation encouraging the development of the statewide utility customer data platform disappears, the utilities could still move forward. 

Would Eversource, Liberty, and Unitil summon the courage to do that, given their active and enthusiastic participation in the project these past six years?  Dream on.