The largest supplier and installer of solar energy projects in the Granite State believes a recent non-decision by the state’s Public Utilities Commission “makes New Hampshire very difficult to do solar at this time.”Dan Weeks, vice president of business development at ReVision Energy, decried what he called “very poor state policy” that not only leaves New Hampshire with the lowest reimbursement rates for alternative power in the region but also leaves the future of those reimbursements rates in doubt.“It’s obviously very disappointing to see New Hampshire continuing to miss the boat on what is now nationally and globally one of the biggest emerging industries,” Weeks said.Weeks and ReVision Energy are not alone in their criticism of a policy that threatens future investment in solar, particularly large-scale projects.“I think this is effectively a slow death sentence for the community solar industry in New Hampshire, as the period over which they know how to finance their projects will get shorter and shorter every year,” Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH, said in a written advisory to media.Evans-Brown noted there are more than 700 megawatts of solar projects pending approval in New Hampshire. Since many larger arrays have had to wait nearly two years to simply get interconnection study results from Eversource, he said, “I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that based on this order, many of those projects will not happen.”The issue revolves around net metering, which allows customers to receive credit for excess electricity they generate and then add back to the electrical grid. The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission (NHPUC) in an early December decision let net metering stand at its current rate but left no assurances of what the future — if any — there is for continuing net metering.As it is, New Hampshire currently has the lowest net metering reimbursement rate in New England.Article continues after…
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“The rates right now are 10.4 cents per kilowatt hour,” Weeks said. “To put that in perspective, that is about half of what has been reimbursed under net metering by neighboring states over the last several years. It varies seasonally and state to state, but during periods of time other states have been well north of 20 cents, but generally they’ve ranged between the high teens to the low 20s, averaging in the region of 20 cents per kilowatt hour in all of our neighboring states.”Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s average electricity rate is 24 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), which is 10% higher than the national average, and it has the fifth-highest electricity retail rates in the country.New Hampshire’s Public Utilities Commission has spent the last few years trying to decide if net metering is unfair to consumers who don’t have access to renewable energy. While net metering benefits those with renewa