The community power program continues to advance in most of the state but is facing a potential pause in three towns that are caught in an unexpected tangle over electricity rates.

The Merrimack County Board of Commissioners voted in December to join the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire. If all goes as planned, it could become the second county in New Hampshire to be part of the electricity-buying program, after Cheshire County.

That decision happened as Concord’s Energy and Environment Advisory Committee has separately recommended the city adopt the program by joining the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire. There will be a public hearing on the plan at the City Council meeting Monday, March 11.

Joining the non-profit coalition is an important part of the recommendation, a fact made obvious as three towns that adopted community power through a different route, via a private broker, are facing customer backlash and a possible pause.

On Thursday the state consumer advocate called for a “time out” implementing the program in Milford, New Boston and Jaffrey, all of which are starting with community power this spring. The problem is that Eversource is the electric utility in those towns and this month it lowered its electricity rate to less than the rate previously negotiated by the town’s power broker: to 8.285 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 10.586 cents.

“Each of these towns submitted a Community Power Aggregation plan to the PUC and each got approval, as required. But each of these plans affirmatively stated that the program would not launch unless it were able to offer customers a rate that is lower than the one available from the local utility,” said Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis in a prepared statement. 

“No municipality … can guarantee customers will always save money by participating in community power aggregation. But a promise is a promise, especially when the promise has been blessed by the regulator.  And it is not fair to raise the price of electricity for thousands of people by more than two cents a kilowatt-hour when that is exactly what you told the PUC you would not do when you launched your aggregation program.”

He has asked the state Department of Energy and PUC to put the program on hold in those three towns and conduct a formal investigation.

No other community faces this problem, either because they are using the Community Power Coalition, which has negotiated a rate slightly lower than Eversource’s, or because their local utility of Liberty or Unitil is selling electricity for more than the rate negotiated by the private broker.

Community power is a program enabled by the legislature four years ago that gives towns and cities the option of buying electricity on the open market instead of paying whatever rate the local utility offers. Once a community joins the program, residents can buy electricity from the new local program or stick with the utility.