Solar panels on residential roof (click on photo to enlarge).One of the ways New Hampshire residents and businesses can have more control over the source and cost of their electricity is to net meter. This means that you invest in and install a renewable energy system (such as solar panels or a wind turbine, as permitted in your municipality), connect it to the electric grid, and generate your own power.
This is not living "off grid," where you generate all the energy you need. By connecting to the grid, you allow your unused energy to transfer to the electric grid, and you take energy from the grid when you need it.
Up until now, our statute only allowed systems up to 100 kilowatts (1000 watts X 100), which is a relatively small system and may not generate enough energy to meet an owner's electric use. Energy used first comes from the power the owner's system generates; any additional energy needed comes from the electric grid, and the customer gets billed for this in "kilowatt hours" by its utility. Any extra, unused energy generated is sent to the grid and the customer is credited toward the next month's bill.
With the belief that the more renewable sources of energy we use in the state, the less fossil-fuel-based energy we'll need, Suzanne filed a bill to help home owners, farmers, and other business owners find net metering more attractive.
She brought together a group of "stakeholders" to discuss the bill prior to the hearing. The group included NH's electric utilities, a municipality interested in net metering, a commissioner from the Public Utilities Commission (which regulates the electric sector) who helped draft the bill, business owners, and others. Between this group's' discussion time and the House committee's work on this bill, over a dozen hours were spent reaching consensus for a bill that could pass.
Suzanne started out with a "group" net metering bill, which was her first choice for amending the then current law, and upped the maximum allowed system to 1 megawatt (1 million watts), on a par with states that have 1 or 2 MW maximums. This would have allowed a farmer or a municipality, for example, to install a system on its building that made the most sense (perhaps the one that always had the most wind or sunshine), with the main meter at that site, then have meters at specific buildings of choice whose energy use would be credited by the utility for the power generated by the main system.
This would work for a municipality that installed a system, let's say, on its city or town hall, and had additional meters at the high school, the junior school and some of the departments (public works, for example). There were many stakeholders interested in having group net metering in the NH statutes.
There was too much pushback from the utilities to get the bill passed as a "group" concept. Suzanne finally agreed that some progress in net metering was better than none and worked with her committee, which was assigned to hear the bill, to end up with an "ought to pass" recommendation to the House. The final bill that passed the House and Senate kept the 1 MW maximum, allowed one meter for one site, and allowed the utility a choice of either giving credit to the system owner for unused power sent to the grid OR generating a check to the owner.
It's clear from the interest in this topic that more can be done in NH to empower residents and business owners to generate their own electricity through clean energy sources. For more information, contact the New Hampshire Sustainable Energy Association here.