NEW HAMPSHIRE ASSOCIATION OF REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSIONS
This segment is another in a series highlighting NHARPC’s efforts to provide education on planning-related topics.
36
Helping Municipalities Meet Their Energy Goals Tim Roache, Executive Director, Rockingham Planning Commission; Meghan Butts, Executive Director, Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Region Planning Commission; J. B. Mack, Principal Planner, Southwest Region Planning Commission
R
ecognizing that New Hampshire is one of the most expensive electricity markets in the nation and has significant dependency on electricity generation out-of-State, several regional planning commissions have become more involved in energy planning to help municipalities and their constituencies save on energy costs and address other municipal energy goals. The two main approaches for assisting communities have consisted of organizing and administering Municipal Electricity Supply Aggregation programs and assisting communities in taking advantage of the State’s Community Power Aggregation law. Municipal Electricity Supply Aggregation and Community Power Aggregation are ways that local governments, such as municipalities and counties, can use economies of scale to better negotiate the terms of the energy supply they are purchasing. You can think of them as buying clubs for electricity. While the two concepts have these similarities there are also differences between the two, including who constitute the members of the buying club. Over time, legislation in New Hampshire has expanded the definition of who can benefit from electric aggregation.
Municipal Electricity Supply Aggregation With Municipal Electricity Supply Aggregation, the buying club members are large public sector consumers like municipalities, counties and school districts. Typically, the main goal of the members is to purchase electricity as a group from a competitive supplier at a lower rate than each member could receive on its own. By purchasing as an aggregation, municipalities, counties and school districts can offer electricity suppliers a larger demand than if they each tried to purchase electricity individually. The larger demand, in turn, allows suppliers
NEW HAMPSHIRE TOWN AND CITY
to offer a better rate to the aggregation than they could to individual members. The aggregation also makes it possible for members to share the costs of documenting load data, organizing a RFP process, selecting a supplier, conducting negotiations, and managing energy contracts. Municipalities do not need to make capital or other investments in order to switch to a competitive electricity supplier; it is entirely a paper transaction. Aggregation participants continue to be billed through their default distributor (Eversource, Until, etc.) and receive a single bill for supply and distribution charges. Moreover, aggregation members continue to receive the same level of electricity delivery, emergency response, and meter reading from their current utility.
Partnering with Regional Planning Commissions Regional planning commissions can serve as an aggregator to facilitate a bid process among competitive electricity suppliers licensed with the NH Public Utilities Commission. Each aggregation member signs its own contract with the supplier for a fixed electricity supply rate. Rates and contracts are identical for each member within a given electric distribution territory. In 2011, the Nashua Regional Planning Commission utilized funding from the Energy Technical Assistance and Planning program to work with 9 towns and 6 school districts to form an aggregation to procure electricity from a competitive supplier. The program proved to be incredibly successful, saving its members a total of $1,608,931 from 2012 through 2017. In 2019, Rockingham Planning Commission (RPC) launched its own municipal electricity supply aggregation program. Members of www.nhmunicipal.org
