InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/power-to-the-people/page/3)
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.
What’s more important to New Hampshire: An elite boarding school — or the nonprofit organization that runs all of New England’s high voltage transmission grid, oversees the buying and selling of electricity throughout the six-state region, and keeps our lights on?
The purpose of SB 307 is to cause the customers of New Hampshire’s electric distribution utilities – Eversource, Liberty, Unitil, and even the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative – to pay for the Twin States Clean Energy Link.
But if you think this means the PUC has seen the light about energy efficiency, and has abandoned its hostility, as evidenced by its order two years ago that sought to eviscerate NHSaves, you are mistaken.
“Electric customers should get used to rolling blackouts every now and again,” said no ratepayer advocate — ever. But if you are (as I am) New Hampshire’s ratepayer advocate, you might be tempted to make such a suggestion
My wife and I spent a lovely week in Paris back in July and, I regret to admit, you may have helped pay for it.
In fact, as the state’s ratepayer advocate I find it downright refreshing that our state’s chief executive is willing to state forthrightly that it is time to stop infinitely funding public policy initiatives, even virtuous ones, via the electric bills paid by Granite Staters.
Don Kreis of Concord and his daughter Rose Keller make a formidable team. Whether as guests on a podcast or fighting the battle against Cystic Fibrosis.
Lewis Strauss famously proclaimed, in a 1954 speech, that — thanks to nuclear power — electricity would become “too cheap to meter.”
People tend to assume that I was an opponent of Northern Pass, Eversource’s ill-fated transmission project that died an ignominious death nearly four years ago. But it ain’t necessarily so.
Electricity is really important – it’s an essential commodity these days, and it has grown notably expensive over the past couple of years. Ergo, the annual election at the Electric Co-op is important.