Net Metering: Connected Cronies Want to Rob You and Profit From Your Electric Bill - Granite Grok

Net Metering: Connected Cronies Want to Rob You and Profit From Your Electric Bill

Solar farm

Net Metering (HB365) is a crony scam that will transfer tens of millions annually from the pockets of small business (job creators) and working families to a select few connected individuals and organizations that can afford to profit from it. And too many Republicans support it.

Related: HB365 – Thank you, Gov. Sununu, for vetoing higher electric rates!

Governor Sununu vetoed it for all the right reasons, but Solar Interests, big business, and many of your municipalities want the legislature to override that veto. Not to help you but to screw you.

First, this legislation does nothing for homeowners with solar. It is designed to benefit large producers with the ability to turn several acres (or equivalent) of solar into a redistribution scheme. That includes private solar companies, Big business interests, institutions, and your local government.

Claims that these uses will “lower taxes” or anything else are disingenuous. We’re talking about the redistribution of wealth through an act of legislative force that benefits a few by setting above market rates everyone will pay. At a cost of something to the order of 20-60 million dollars more annually.

From your pockets to someone else’s all because of a government mandate.

If your town or any elected representative (or anyone else for that matter) is suggesting net metering will lower your taxes it is because they are charging (literally) everyone in else in the state too much for electricity. While some folks might smile (insert evil laughter) and rub their hands together at the prospect of offsetting local taxes on the backs of people who might not benefit from them, consider.

  • Every other municipality, business, or anyone with the resources, will want to milk you.
  • Tens of million annually will be diverted for productive uses to pay more for electricity above the market rate.
  • Job creators will offset those costs with lower wages, fewer higher, or by relocating or not setting up in New Hampshire at all.
  • Solar is not reliable or predictable which causes more problems than it solves.
  • The influx of intermittent resources will drive rates up further.

This net metering mandate drives up the cost of electricity to all other consumers by raising the costs of bids received by electricity suppliers to procure default and competitive supply rates. Why? Because energy marketers have to build the risk of the commitments the utilities have in intermittent resources that are only capable of generating power 15 to 35 percent of the time.

A 2017 study by Meridien Energy Policy in Washington D.C. concluded that if net metering penetration levels reach 10 percent of load, the cost of retail electricity supply to non-participants will increase anywhere from 8 to 17 percent.

And, most important of all, your taxes will never go down. This will result in new spending.

Make NH Less Friendly for, Well, Everyone.

Our business climate has improved thanks to lower business taxes but jacking up the cost of doing business to appease a handful of connected insiders is not good for energy diversity, job creators, or the marketplace.

Anyone thinking of coming here or staying here has to consider how much more expensive this will make it to Stay, Work and Play in the New Hampshire. The answer is a lot more.

You need to contact your Republican Representatives in the House (because you can’t trust the Republicans in the Senate) and tell them why they need to vote against any veto override of HB365. 

Finally, anyone with solar can already sell their excess power at market rates. They can enter into agreements to sell any amount of power. HB365 is not meant to make that easier, it is meant to shift all the risk and the cost of the risk, by default, onto you for the benefit of a select few producers with special inflated pricing that screws everyone else.

Don’t let this veto get overridden.

| NHBR
| NE Ratepayers

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