InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/power-to-the-people/)
D. Maurice KreisPower to the People is a new column by D. Maurice 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.
That much is obvious in the aftermath of Governor Ayotte’s announcement on September 15 that Chairman Daniel Goldner of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was out of a job as of 5:00 p.m. that very day.
If your utility says it loves you, grab your wallet because you and your cash are almost certainly being unfairly parted.
Sixty-five bucks is what it costs to get through the door of Costco to buy your groceries there for a year. So why, oh why, does the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) think you should have to pay Eversource more than $500 a year just for the privilege of being a customer of the utility?
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!
But then we get these rate cases and my analysts start asking all kinds of annoying questions. Most of them come down to some version of this meta-query: Are utilities like Eversource and Unitil gold-plating their electric distribution systems?
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Except, perhaps, Eversource.
And I don’t have any reason to doubt that electricity rates in New Hampshire have climbed, on average, by 36 percent in the nine years I have served as the state’s official advocate for the interests of residential utility customers.
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.
The procedural order issued on March 26 by (and here’s the tipoff that news is involved) just one of the three members of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Ninety-nine point nine times out of 100, orders of the PUC are signed by all three commissioners.
Four economists have submitted written expert testimony in that docket, in which the PUC is considering Eversource’s request to hike its distribution charges by a whopping 47 percent for residential customers.