When you look at your electric bill, the first thing you notice is the “cost due” in the upper right-hand corner, and with the brutally cold weather we’ve had recently, that cost is sure to rise. Look a little lower on the bill, and you will see breakouts for supply and delivery, both of which have varied widely in the last five years.
The Eversource electricity supply rate took a roller coaster ride from 6.627 cents per kilowatt hour in 2021 to 22.566 cents in 2023, back down to 8.929 cents in 2025, and has now risen to 11.303 cents. Since New Hampshire is dependent upon natural gas for much of its non-renewable generation, the war in Ukraine has had a major impact on our supply costs. The rapid reduction in 2023 occurred at the same time natural gas prices started falling and Eversource faced competition from community power.
Delivery is another story. Faced with the requirements of the 1996 deregulation legislation to divest itself of generation facilities, Eversource sold or closed its fossil-fueled, biomass, hydro and nuclear plants. Eversource’s revenues were thereafter limited to the components that go into delivery: transmission, distribution, a handful of other miscellaneous fees, and the customer fee, which since 2020 has risen from $13.81 to $19.31, a 40% increase. Pressures to upgrade regional transmission lines and the local distribution network for new consumers and generators will ensure that electricity prices continue to rise.
Moving energy from where it is made to your house is a complicated miracle of century-old and modern technologies. Monetizing that resource is a complicated mess of marketplaces for energy, capacity, proof of renewable content, and cap and trading of CO2. All these markets fluctuate. Some of them are based on the price of energy in the next five minutes, or the next day, or next months. Or, as in the case of the capacity market, just having the potential to generate electricity adds costs.
What can you do with this bewildering risk of rising energy prices? Invest in yourself. Improving efficiency means you don’t pay for energy you don’t use. Making your own electricity by installing solar is a start. Storing it in a battery and never sending it back to the grid eliminates all the costs of delivery. And if SB540 passes into law, you will be able to go to your local big box hardware store and buy a balcony solar panel and plug it directly into your regular outlet. Free energy is always welcome.
Peterborough resident Bruce Tucker is a member of the Peterborough Community Power Committee and on the board of directors of the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire.