Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

New Hampshire Electric Rates Jump August 1. Here Is Every New Price, and the $50 Million Mistake Behind It.

Regulators approved supply rates they have been told are too low, roughly $50 million in utility losses is coming due, and the cheapest electricity in the state is in Laconia.

On August 1, the price of the electricity itself goes up for nearly every household in New Hampshire. Eversource’s default supply rate climbs 24 percent, from 11.303 cents per kilowatt-hour to 14.009. Unitil rises to 14.348 cents. Liberty hits 15.835. The New Hampshire Electric Co-op’s Co-op Power charge jumps from 11.1 cents to 13.9.

The numbers matter, and the chart below has all of them. What matters more is why they are rising. New Hampshire’s Public Utilities Commission changed how the big utilities buy power, the price guesses built into your bill came in low two winters running, and roughly $50 million in losses is now coming due. The commission set the new rates knowing they still will not cover the cost of the power. That gap does not vanish. It lands on a future bill.

If you can switch suppliers, the window to beat the new prices is measured in days, not weeks. Details below.

The new prices, utility by utility

Residential supply rates for the August 2026 through January 2027 period, in cents per kilowatt-hour. Granite State Report graphic; sources in the chart footer and the fact-check table below.

Start with what a kilowatt-hour of supply will cost from August 1 through January 31, 2027. For a household using 650 kilowatt-hours a month, the upper end of average residential use according to the PUC, the monthly supply charge will run from about $91 on Eversource default service to almost $103 on Liberty, the Valley News reported. Delivery charges come on top of that.

Eversource’s 14.009-cent rate, approved by the commission on June 25 per that same report, is a 23.9 percent jump from the 11.303 cents posted for the current period. That is $17.59 more each month for the 650-kilowatt-hour household before a single delivery charge changes.

Liberty’s June 18 order tells the sharper story. The company asked for 21.128 cents, an increase of almost 54 percent, to claw back $8.5 million it under-collected in past periods. The commission cut the request to 15.835 cents, citing concern about “serious rate shock” for customers, according to the Valley News. The rest of that money is still owed. It will surface on a later bill.

Unitil lands at 14.348 cents, the PUC-approved figure announced by the towns of Hampton and Tamworth in their community power notices.

The Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, which supplies roughly 70 member communities, set its Granite Basic residential rate at 14.949 cents in Eversource territory and 14.729 cents in Liberty territory. Run the math and community power costs a typical household $6.11 a month more than Eversource default, and about $7 a month less than Liberty. After more than a year of losing on price, the coalition is back to roughly even.

The Electric Co-op, which sets its own rates, raised Co-op Power from 11.1 to 13.9 cents while trimming its Regional Access Charge from 4.3 to 4.0 cents. The average member using 573 kilowatt-hours will pay $15.25 more a month, a 9.8 percent bill increase. The Co-op pointed to New England’s coldest winter in two decades and to volatile markets, and its president, Michael Jennings, said “we worked hard to limit this increase.”

For perspective, none of this touches the 2022 crisis, when Eversource default service reached nearly 22.6 cents after Russia invaded Ukraine. This is not that. In one respect it is worse, because this time the state’s own regulator built the problem.

A $50 million pricing failure, made in Concord

For years the mechanics were dull and dependable. Each utility ran a competitive solicitation, signed six-month fixed-price contracts for its full default-service load, and passed the cost through. The price was known before the rate was set. Boring worked.

Then, starting in 2024, the commission directed Eversource, Liberty, and Unitil to buy a growing share of that power on the ISO New England spot market instead, according to CPCNH. The theory, championed by then-PUC Chairman Daniel Goldner, was that suppliers charged fat risk premiums for six-month price guarantees, and spot purchasing would squeeze those premiums out. Consumer Advocate Don Kreis writes that Gov. Kelly Ayotte removed Goldner last summer, after a separate Eversource rate decision that remains on appeal, and the transition stopped halfway. The standing rule today: half the power through fixed six-month contracts, half through the spot market.

Here is the catch. A default rate must hold still for six months, but spot prices move every hour. So the utilities and their regulator guess. The guess is called a proxy price, the commission prescribes the method, and utility witnesses have told the commission that the method is more likely than not to underprice real market costs. CPCNH points to Unitil’s December 10, 2025 hearing in docket DE 25-032 for that admission, on the record, at page 28 of the transcript.

Two cold winters did the rest. When wholesale prices spiked, the too-low rates kept collecting too little. State Rep. Thomas Cormen of Lebanon, deputy ranking member of the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee, put the tab at roughly $38 million for Eversource, $9 million for Liberty, and $3 million for Unitil over 18 months. Kreis pegs the combined hole at about $50 million. Eversource’s new rate already carries about a cent per kilowatt-hour to begin recovering more than $25 million of its share.

And the commission just did it again. In his June 26 analysis, Kreis says the PUC is

Read that twice. The state’s consumer advocate says the regulator approved rates it has been told are short. Every month of shortfall is a loan you never agreed to, repaid on a bill you have not seen yet.

Wholesale costs carry blame too. ISO New England’s Day-Ahead Ancillary Services Initiative, a reliability market launched in March 2025, added about $921 million to the region’s electricity costs in its first 11 months, more than six times the grid operator’s original estimate, per CPCNH’s figures. Ayotte wrote ISO New England in March demanding it address the overrun. The wires between Concord and the regional grid operator run hot in both directions.

The law that just changed who pays

Translated: if default service loses money, default-service customers repay it. A community power household in Hanover no longer bails out a default customer in Hooksett through the distribution charge everyone pays. Rep. Harrington of Strafford District 18 sponsored the bill; the House passed it with a unanimous committee recommendation.

Two asterisks survived the Senate. First, the law leaves the PUC an exception it can invoke in extraordinary circumstances, and whether the frigid winter we just paid for qualifies will be the commission’s call, as Cormen’s column lays out. Second, the House version barred the commission from forcing spot-market purchases at all; the Senate stripped that provision on the advice of the PUC and the Department of Energy. So the experiment continues at half throttle, with your bill as the test bench. Cormen’s verdict on the market this system produced: “there is not true competition. Not yet, anyway.”

The cheapest electricity in New Hampshire is in Laconia

While Concord argued methodology, five towns hired their own wholesale buyer and beat everybody. Communities working with Freedom Energy Logistics as their purchasing agent locked prices that make the utility chart look expensive: 10.286 cents in Laconia, 9.573 in Londonderry, 9.699 in Merrimack, 10.406 in Windham, and 11.18 in Salem, per Kreis. Laconia’s community power price sits 26.6 percent below Eversource default service. A 650-kilowatt-hour household there saves about $24 a month against the default rate, roughly $290 a year.

One catch, and it bites. Every one of those prices except Salem’s expires at the end of October, right before winter wholesale prices take their annual leap. Salem’s rate holds through October 2027. If you live in the other four towns, take the deal now, then watch for the replacement price due by late September before it renews into winter.

CPCNH members who want cleaner power can pay for it in tiers: 33 percent renewable for an extra 0.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, 50 percent for 1.1, or 100 percent for 3.1. New Hampshire keeps debating where its power should come from, a fight GSR covered in its report on the state’s offshore wind reversal. For now, the choice on your bill is mostly about price.

What to do before your July meter read

Supply choice in New Hampshire is real and free to change, but the clock is unforgiving. To be on a new supplier when the August 1 rates land, Kreis’s advice is to complete the switch no later than two days ahead of your July meter reading, and read dates fall all through the month. Miss the window and the change catches the next billing cycle instead.

• Pull your most recent bill. Find the supply line: it reads default service, Granite Basic, or Co-op Power. Note the rate and your account number.
• Compare that rate to the chart above. Each penny per kilowatt-hour is about $6.50 a month for a 650-kilowatt-hour household.
• In a CPCNH community, joining and leaving are free at any time, and the greener tiers are one call away: 1-866-603-7697.
• In Laconia, Londonderry, Merrimack, Salem, or Windham, call First Point Power at 1-888-875-1711 with your utility account number.

If the bill itself is the problem, the Co-op runs Project Care for members at 1-800-698-2007, and the utilities advertise payment plans and assistance programs. Make that call before you miss a payment, not after. Rising fixed costs are already pricing young families out of this state, a squeeze GSR documented in its report on New Hampshire’s affordability trap. An electric bill nobody voted on is part of it.

The part nobody in Concord wants to own

Strip out the acronyms and here is what happened. The regulator ordered a market experiment. The experiment guessed wrong by roughly $50 million. The regulator then approved another round of rates it has been told are too low, while a brand-new law sorts out which customers absorb the miss. Nobody at the PUC mailed you an invoice for the policy. They mailed it to your utility, which will mail it to you, in installments, with the timing of its choosing.

Remember what the 1996 restructuring law did: it took the power plants away from the utilities. Every supplier on that chart buys from the same New England wholesale market. The spread between 9.573 cents in Londonderry and 15.835 cents at Liberty is not generation. It is judgment, procurement skill, and who gets to bill their mistakes to someone else.

The next default-service filings arrive this fall for the February 1 rates. GSR will read the dockets, count the deferrals, and report which utilities under-collected again. If you work at a utility, the PUC, or the Department of Energy and know where the next miss is buried, my inbox is open.

— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Every factual claim above was verified against primary or official sources before publication; see the fact-check table. The state’s puc.nh.gov and governor.nh.gov sites block automated retrieval, so PUC order details and the governor’s ISO-NE letter are cited through the Valley News and CPCNH rather than linked directly; the RSA citation is given in plain text for the same reason. Dollar-and-percent figures marked GSR arithmetic are computed from the sourced rates. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a note identifying what changed and when.