InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/power-to-the-people/page/14)
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.
Cost-of-service rate treatment is exactly what we supposedly got away from by restructuring the electric industry to eliminate old-fashioned, vertically integrated utility monopolies. The parade of generators begging for a return to the good old days could well include facilities like Seabrook, Merrimack and Schiller stations.
What NEPOOL is voting on Tuesday would allow journalists to attend NEPOOL meetings upon payment of $5,000 per year.
But New Hampshire’s electric customers have paid dearly for restructuring – by my rough count, about $1 billion in so-called “stranded” costs. This money went to the former monopoly utilities to make them whole after being forced to sell off their generation assets to companies like Exelon.
The date was August 5, 1988. Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) had recently declared bankruptcy, the first electric utility in the U.S. to do that since the Great Depression. The crushing debt and massive cost overruns associated with the Seabrook nuclear power plant had sucked PSNH dry.
Let me say this as clearly and unequivocally as I can: The lights are not going out. There will not be rolling blackouts.
So if you were looking to pay someone to promote the benefits of replacing beef with brussels sprouts, Five Guys would not be on your short list. And, yet, when it comes to ratepayer-funded energy efficiency, we’re doing the equivalent of paying Five Guys to persuade people to eat fewer hamburgers.
Nine hundred good jobs are at stake, co-sponsors told the House Committee on Science, Technology and Energy Committee last Wednesday at the hearing on Senate Bill 446. Representative Herb Richardson (R- Lancaster) thinks the total is more like 1,500.
Rather, because Sunshine Week is a celebration of the virtues of government transparency, this is a great time to consider the extent to which secrecy is impeding the development of great energy policy… Plus, I am convinced that ratepayers get better outcomes at the PUC the more sunshine there is.
NH’s consumer advocate weighs in on Northern Pass. “If you dislike Northern Pass, you should dislike ‘New England Clean Energy Connect’ even more. That’s CMP’s rival project – which would, if built, do to pristine areas in Maine’s rural Franklin and Somerset counties exactly what Northern Pass would do to similar locations in the Granite State.”