Energy bills are too high in New Hampshire: That was the impetus for Kevin Riley to get solar panels for his home.
The Sanbornton resident said his electric bills were running more than $200 per month — and he was financing it with money in his 401K.
Two years ago, he bought a five-kilowatt solar array system that has brought his bills down to a minimal $4 a month.
“For older folks, it’s huge,” Riley said of rising energy costs. “It’s a huge thing for us because we’re all on fixed incomes. And you get colder and you get hotter, so you use more electricity, use more things to stay comfortable.”
But the upfront cost for his panels was no small charge: He paid $23,000, which also came out of his savings. With his current electric bills so low, the panels have already paid themselves off, but he said relief was not available for the circumstances he faced.
New Hampshire fuel and energy assistance programs provide aid for people struggling to pay their bills, but rising costs and gaps in assistance continue to place a financial burden on Granite Staters.
Programs available in New Hampshire
The New Hampshire Department of Energy administers the Electric Assistance Program and the Fuel Assistance Program to assist qualifying households with their bills and to increase their energy efficiency.
The Electric Assistance Program is a 12-month bill assistance program that offer discounts from 5% to 86%, depending on the household’s income and size. Applications are accepted year-round for electric customers serviced by a regulated utility.
The Fuel Assistance Program helps residents pay for heating costs in the colder months. It is the state branch for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, and relies on federal funding each year to administer relief. Benefits range drastically, but the average benefit a qualifying household receives is $1,045. This year, the New Hampshire Department of Energy added $6 million in benefits and raised the minimum benefit.
Community action agencies are responsible for connecting with residents and disbursing the funds to applicants. Kristin Bertrand, the director of energy and area resource centers for the Community Action Program Belknap-Merrimack Counties, said it received 5,376 applications last year — lower than recent years, but still high compared to pre-COVID-19 numbers.
Applications opened for priority groups — people over 60, families with children under 6, and households with a previous heat emergency — on July 1, with another round opening on Sept.1 and closing April 30. Benefits are delivered no earlier than Dec.1. Bertrand said the organization also takes emergency applications.
“Weather can make a season fluctuate,” she said. “So if we have a cold snap coming in, or we know there’s going to be a snowstorm coming through the weekend, we’re prepared for a higher influx of applicants, maybe who are emergencies or going to be calling on Monday.”
Michael Tabory, chief operating officer of the Community Action Program, said the income guidelines on the assistance applications shouldn’t deter people from applying — more applicants qualify than they realize.
“People should apply because there is a possibility they’re eligible even if they don’t think they are,” he said.
The NHDOE also offers a Weatherization Assistance Program to serve low-income households that face high energy costs and don’t have the means to invest in energy-efficient home improvements. Rebates and incentives are also offered through the NHSaves program and directly from New Hampshire’s major utility companies.
‘It’s critical, but it’s not enough’
Despite some help from the state and federal governments, advocates say Granite Staters struggle to afford their utility and heating costs, on top of other payments and necessities.
Sarah Kelly is head of the Energy Justice Clinic at Dartmouth College, which does participatory research to explore local issues around energy security. Qualitative data is collected through interviews with people highly burdened with energy costs.
She said federal dollars for energy and fuel assistance are an important safety net, but don’t meet the need for people also burdened with rising costs for housing, transportation and food, especially in the Upper Valley, where they specialize their work.
“It’s critical, but it’s not enough,” Kelly said. “It’s designed in an emergency situation; it’s not designed to … cover all of their fuel costs, and right now a lot of the nonprofits that provide support say that the funding doesn’t even cover one full refill for people.”
Ryan Clouthier echoes that point: He’s chief executive officer of the Community Action Partnership Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties. He said they receive more and more new faces every year. The agency provides as much support as it can for clients, but “you can only go so far with federal dollars.”
“We do see a lot of people who are exhausting their benefits earlier than normal, and so we’re looking for other avenues and other ways to try to help assist them and get them through the winter here,” he said.
New Hampshire has some of the highest electricity rates in the country, and that price is about to get even steeper come Aug. 1. The Public Utilities Commission has approved rate changes for all three investor-owned utilities and the Community Power Coalition in New Hampshire that will result in a $6 to $18 increase in monthly bills, as reported by NHPR. The price of fuel is also rising: Both fuel oil and kerosene have increased over $1 per gallon, on average, compared to rates in August 2025.
Mary Congoran runs the Contoocook Carry Community Fund that provides wood, oil, propane and other fuels to community members who ask. She says people who cannot afford to heat their homes conventionally find other means to do so, such as getting diesel from their local gas station or opening their hot oven doors, which can create health problems.
“I don’t know how some of the people that I talk to make it,” she said. “It just it fills me up that I can help at the moment.”
New sources of help
Some programs that can help with costs are coming online soon.
The Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates Program and the Home Efficiency Rebates Program was created through the Inflation Reduction Act, with over $34 million given to the NHDOE to administer the programs.
However, the program has stalled since the department applied in 2024, due to response wait times from the U.S. Department of Energy and trouble securing a program administrator. Thirty-four other states have also been approved for the program but have not gone online, according to research firm Atlas Public Policy.
The HEAR program is expected to launch this summer, according to NHDOE’s webpage, but the HER program has no announced launch date. It has discouraged people like Kevin Riley, the Sanbornton resident, from switching to energy-efficient technology, but the rising cost of utilities pushed his decision get ultimately get solar panels.
“It’s very frustrating,” Riley said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a joint effort by anybody to sort of move these programs forward and use them in a prudent and an insightful way.”
He said there is a large focus on municipal clean energy, but not so much on the residential side. He hopes the eventual implementation of programs like HEAR and HER will incentivize more people in the state to invest in such technologies.
“Everybody deserves to have a safe place to live — clean, dry — and food to eat and good medical care. It’s a right. It’s not a privilege,” Riley said. “And I look at the same thing with the solar panel. We have a right to have clean air. We have a right to have a good environment. And I think they should keep pushing everybody to be doing this.”
