Every electric customer in New Hampshire can now choose who will sell them electricity. This move, beyond the good old days of take-it-or-leave-it service from a monopoly utility, was supposed to be great for residential customers. But right now, in Concord, it is an expensive mess.
Be mad — be very mad, if you are a residential customer of Unitil in Concord or, indeed, any other community in the Unitil service territory that has decided to participate in the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire. Here’s why.
On Feb. 1, the default energy service rate charged by Unitil increases slightly to 12.061 cents per kilowatt-hour. Default energy service is what you get from Unitil if you are not buying electricity from elsewhere.
For nearly everyone in Concord, there is an “elsewhere” — Concord Community Power, administered by the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire. In October 2024, Concord residents who did not affirmatively opt out began taking service from CPCNH. This dynamic applies everywhere in Merrimack County, where a county-wide community power plan is also administered by CPCNH.
CPCNH’s basic rate is also going up on Feb. 1 — to a whopping big 14.663 cents. So it should make sense for Unitil customers to switch from CPCNH back to Unitil’s default service. That’s worth nearly $17 each month on a typical residential bill. If only it were that simple.
To switch electric suppliers, Unitil requires at least two business days’ notice. And not, mind you, any two business days — Unitil wants that notice at least two business days before your monthly meter read. And your monthly meter read could be any day of the month — check your bill for the details.
If you haven’t had your monthly meter read yet in January, and that date is still at least two business days in the future, you can switch from CPCNH to Unitil and save that $17. If not, Unitil won’t switch you back to their default energy service until after your February meter read.
And, unlike making the change in January, since that February meter read will occur within the six month period that Unitil’s new default energy service rate is effective, the utility won’t put you on that rate. It will, instead, place you on a variable rate — one that changes month to month — and which, in February, will be an absurdly high 17.606 cents per kilowatt-hour. In that scenario, a typical customer would actually pay an extra $19.
As winter abates, a customer on the Unitil variable rate would feel the situation ease and start saving money. The variable rate declines to 11.081 cents in March, 9.663 cents in April, and 9.323 cents in May. But then the rate starts increasing again, reaching 12.442 cents in July.
There is even a further, annoying wrinkle. As a kind of counter-measure to Unitil, CPCNH offers Unitil customers a variable rate of its own, ranging from a high of 21.139 cents in February to a low of 10.899 cents in May, higher in each instance than Unitil’s offering.
Unitil customers are “confused” and “dissatisfied” by all of this, according to testimony filed by the state’s Department of Energy in Unitil’s pending rate case. They have a right to be.
The state’s other two investor-owned electric utilities, Eversource and Liberty, do not play this game. Unitil convinced the Public Utilities Commission to approve this scheme several years ago as a way of preventing customers from bouncing between the utility’s electricity and service from non-utility suppliers which themselves like to offer various variable rate plans. I’m talking here not about CPCNH but about private companies like Ambit, ENH and Town Square Energy.
All of this might be okay — if only it were not so danged hard to switch. But neither the utilities nor CPCNH like to encourage switching, so they make it complicated.
If you are a Unitil customer in Concord or any of the other CPCNH communities in Unitil’s territory, you can’t just call Unitil and tell them you want back onto the utility’s default energy service. You have to call CPCNH at 866-603-7697.
Here’s the bottom line for Unitil customers in CPCNH communities. If you are at least two business days before your January meter read, you should seriously consider calling CPCNH to switch to Unitil default service. If you’ve already had that reading, you should wait until February or maybe even March, depending on how many days of that 17-cent rate you would suffer by switching in February.
Despite this mess, I remain a fan of community power aggregation — a potent opportunity for electric customers to combine their wholesale buying power by town or by county. CPCNH, a public-spirited consortium of towns and counties, is now the second biggest load-serving entity in New Hampshire, behind only Eversource.
One last thing. Keep in mind that the energy charge on your electric bill is, in general, only about half of what you pay every month. The rest is made up in charges you pay to the monopoly utility to maintain the poles and wires.
Attorney Donald M. Kreis is the state’s Consumer Advocate, representing the interests of residential utility customers.