House Bill 1600
HB 1600 will help increase Renewable Energy in NH. HB1600 will give NH communities greater opportunities to meet their Renewable Energy goals. The bill allows Community Power Aggregations to serve net metered customer-generators in the 1 to 5 MW size range and use their Renewable Energy to serve the entire community.
NH needs bills like this. The bill enjoyed unanimous bipartisan support in the House with a consensus committee amendment. No objections were raised at its Senate hearing. Communications and suggestions by the NH Department of Energy helped to make the Bill stronger. The DOE raised new concerns just this week and is now opposing the Bill. We quickly addressed their concerns, but they have not reversed their opposition.
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT to make renewable energy more accessible for all communities in New Hampshire. Please write to your Senator for their support and to the NH DOE to reverse course and support the bill.
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See our Senate testimony with proposed amendment based on DOE request of 2/16/24.
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2/16/24 HB 1600-FN NH DOE Letter of Testimony , that we based our proposed amendment on.
Summary of DOE Concerns:
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HB1600 will increase administration and oversight needs
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ANSWER: No. Current systems are already able to monitor compliance.
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There may be unintended consequences, let’s wait until next year
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ANSWER: Our communities want more renewable energy now, not later.
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We still need to fix how utilities are accounting for CPA loads, so let’s wait.
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ANSWER: Yes, we need utilities to start recognizing the value of renewable energy for communities. Even if those necessary fixes are delayed we can still use HB1600 in some of our communities.
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