When conveyor belt manufacturer Wire Belt opened its new facility in Bedford, N.H., last fall, the company looked forward to saving money and fighting climate change with a 2,400-panel solar array installed on the roof. 

Four months later, however, Wire Belt’s solar panels lie dormant as the company waits for its utility to hook the project up to the grid. It’s an example of the often long and unpredictable interconnection delays facing large solar projects in New Hampshire and nationwide. 

Wire Belt president Jon Greer was among those who testified at a January hearing in support of state legislation that aims to streamline this connection process, a proposal that is receiving broad support from climate advocates and the business community, including companies like Wire Belt, whose monthly power bills approach $60,000. 

Sen. Kevin Avard, chairman of the Senate energy and natural resources committee, who introduced the bill, said it’s time to fix the system. 

“We just want to make sure that the people who took advantage of solar have the opportunity to utilize the good clean energy, hopefully at a lower price,” Avard said.

Currently, utilities determine their own process for approving interconnection requests for projects larger than 100 kilowatts. The bill calls for the New Hampshire Department of Energy to draft and assess rules that would create a uniform policy for all utilities to use, with the goal of making the process smoother and more predictable. 

“Right now there are no guardrails, no timelines, there’s no real obligation to hurry,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. “This is where, if you’re a regulated monopoly, regulators are supposed to step in.” 

Wire Belt is not the only business feeling discouraged. Russ Greenlaw, senior vice president of sales for the Associated Grocers of New England, explained at the hearing that the delays make it difficult for members to commit to spending money on solar developments when it is so unclear when they would be able to see benefits to their bottom line. 

“There’s just a complete lack of clarity and predictability around the process,” said Heidi Kroll, director of government relations for New Hampshire law firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell.

Widespread challenges

Interconnection issues are not limited to New Hampshire. Though each state has its own approach, the basics are the same: New renewable energy projects that want to hook up to the grid have to submit interconnection requests to the utility. The utility evaluates the project and its impact on the grid, then decides whether any upgrades are necessary to accommodate the new power source before approving it for connection. 

Residential arrays and other small projects are often approved quickly: Eversource, which serves 71% of New Hampshire’s households, expects to receive as many as 5,000 interconnection requests this year and to approve 95% of them within days. 

However, in New Hampshire and many other states, the surge in larger renewable energy developments has created logjams in this process as utilities try to figure out how much the grid can bear and how to accommodate additional power — how to balance the benefits of renewable energy supply with the strain the new generators put on the grid. 

“Interconnection is one of the biggest barriers right now to getting clean energy done,” Evans-Brown said. 

And most states do not yet have systems in place that are keeping up with these challenges. Freeing the Grid, a nonprofit initiative that grades states on their interconnection policies, found that only six states — none in New England — and the District of Columbia scored above a C. New Hampshire was among the 17 states earning a D. 

Eversource, New Hampshire’s largest utility, has a queue of just under 100 projects needing further study. Unitil, which serves about 10% of the state’s customers, has four larger projects in the waiting line — three since the fall and one since late spring — representing the significant majority of the pending load. 

New Hampshire has taken early steps to address its interconnection problem. In July 2022, the legislature asked the state to investigate and make recommendations. The resulting report, released in December 2023, concluded that there are indeed “considerable technical, operating, processing, and procedural challenges,” to adding growing amounts of renewable energy to the grid. 

The report called for the creation of two working groups — one focused on technical and engineering problems and solutions, and another for administrative and process issues — to further assess the situation and provide solutions. 

The legislation

For many stakeholders, however, this proposed approach is not nearly robust enough, prompting a bipartisan group of legislators to back the current bill. 

The original bill would have required the state to begin a rulemaking process within 45 days and adopt final rules by the end of 2024. This timeline, however, would not have been possible within the department’s rulemaking process, said Joshua Elliott, director of the energy department’s division of policy and programs. The legislation was then amended to call for “a proceeding to examine and assess draft rules to be adopted” rather than a final rulemaking. 

“The bill as introduced was not implementable,” Elliott said. “As amended, the bill both gives the department the resources to accomplish this task and a timeline that is implementable.”

Some advocates, however, aren’t convinced that the amended bill has enough specificity and force to make the needed difference. 

“It is not explicitly clear that a rulemaking is required, and it doesn’t give any deadline,” Evans-Brown said. “It was a valuable hearing — that’s a big step — but I am very skeptical that the [department] is taking this problem seriously.”

The Senate’s energy and natural resources committee voted unanimously in mid-February to recommend passage of the amended bill, and legislators are eager to see it passed and hopefully help ease a longstanding problem. 

“What’s the pause, what’s the hiccup?” Avard said. “It’s nothing complicated.”

Editor’s note: The headline on this article was updated to clarify that interconnection delays are only affecting projects over 100 kW.

Large New Hampshire solar projects face delays trying to connect to power grid  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Climate advocates, public officials, and the solar industry are asking Massachusetts to update its solar incentive program to reignite slowing growth in the sector while making the system fairer and more effective. 

The Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) program hit its fifth anniversary in late 2023, and the state has launched a review to determine how to adapt the system to current economic realities and environmental priorities. While most agree it has been an effective system for supporting the growth of solar, stakeholders would also like to see changes that would better respond to fluctuating market conditions and encourage development on the most suitable sites.

These recommendations come at a time when the Massachusetts solar industry is losing some momentum, despite the incentives the state provides. The state’s clean energy and climate plan estimates Massachusetts will need some 27 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2050 to meet the goal of going carbon neutral by that year. But current development is not keeping pace. In 2021, the state’s new solar installations topped 600 megawatts, according to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association. In 2022 and 2023, installations dropped to roughly half that level.

“SMART has done a good job of continuing the deployment of solar in the commonwealth and there are a number of really good components to it,” said Mark Sylvia, chief of staff at Blue Wave Solar. “Now we’re at an important inflection point.”

Real-world rate changes

SMART works by paying the owners of solar installations a set rate per kilowatt-hour of power they produce. The base rate is determined by the project’s size and location; so-called “adders” increase the rate for projects that serve low-income households, are located on rooftops, or have other features the state wants to encourage. The system was designed on the assumption that the cost of building solar would keep dropping as demand grew, reducing the need for subsidies. Thus, SMART rates get lower as more solar capacity is built. 

Many stakeholders have raised concerns about continuing this declining rate model. In recent years, costs have not continued falling as expected. Instead, supply chain problems during the COVID pandemic and changes to steel tariffs drove up equipment prices. Costs to interconnect to the grid and to acquire land for solar developments have risen as well. 

Industry players and environmental advocates have suggested replacing the declining rate approach with a mechanism that would adjust rates according to market conditions once or twice a year.

“There’s this across-the-board issue around SMART rates being lower than they need to be to drive the market,” said Nick D’Arbeloff, president of the Solar Energy Business Association of New England. “SMART as a whole has to rethink how it can better incent projects.”

Policy priorities

Additional rate adjustments could also be used to push specific policy priorities more effectively, said many. 

Several pointed to the issue of solar canopies, panels mounted high enough above the ground to provide shade and shelter from rain, usually in parking lots. A report released by the state in July found that the state’s parking lots had the technical potential to support some 14 gigawatts of capacity on solar canopies. However, material and equipment costs make building canopies particularly pricey right now. 

SMART already includes an adder for canopies of 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, but it isn’t enough to cover the additional costs. Strategically increasing the adder would make canopies more financially feasible and could help capture some of the untapped potential parking lots offer, supporters said.

Tweaks to the program could also help more low-income households realize the financial and environmental advantages of solar power, said Ben Underwood, co-chief executive and co-founder of Resonant Energy, a Boston-based solar development company focused on projects that benefit low-income communities. 

The program currently incentivizes these developments in a few ways. It offers adders for projects on low-income properties and for community solar facilities that allocate more than half of their production to low-income customers, and provides higher base rates for projects smaller than 25 kilowatts on low-income households. 

However, these nudges have had little effect so far. Just 4% of the small systems using SMART qualify for the low-income base rate, though Underwood estimates roughly one-third of Massachusetts households could qualify. 

“The rates are not leading to adoption in a way that’s proportionate,” he said.

To jumpstart more development in this sector, Underwood would like to see the compensation rates for low-income projects returned to at least their original starting points — between 35 cents and 39 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on utility — and be exempted from decreases over time. 

“There’s really not a risk of having deployment be too fast at this point, so long as sufficient consumer protections are in place, because there’s so much ground that needs to be made up,” he said. 

Siting selection

As interest in solar has expanded, siting has been an ongoing controversy in Massachusetts. Some advocates object to the use of previously undeveloped lands for solar projects, arguing that cutting down trees and disturbing habitats for the sake of renewable energy does more harm than good. Others contend that the state’s ambitious solar goals can’t be reached without using at least some so-called “greenfields.”

“It is the industry’s belief that we’re going to have a very hard time reaching the goals Massachusetts has set for itself if we suddenly cease using available land for solar,” D’Arbeloff said.

Many commenters have suggested there are ways to bridge this divide. 

The current rules subtract a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour from the compensation rate for projects on greenfield land. However, the state should also consider looking more carefully at the parcels included in this definition, said Jessica Robertson, director of policy and business development for New England at solar developer New Leaf Energy. 

Now, a large parcel might be subject to the lower rate even though only a small portion of the land within it is considered unsuitable for development. In other cases the data used to classify the land is very out-of-date. Robertson pointed to one case in which a piece of land occupied by a gravel pit was classified as agricultural using soil samples from decades prior. She would like to see a process that more easily allows for the assessment of individual parcels as they are proposed for potential development, rather than just relying on existing lists. 

“The regulations in the last round painted with a very broad brush,” she said. “We hope that the next round will take that more nuanced approach.”

The Nature Conservancy proposes a zoning system that would code potential sites as green, yellow, or red, depending on their suitability for development and the potential for negative environmental impact. Mass Audubon suggests eliminating support for solar projects on land identified as high-biodiversity, while boosting or creating funds for development on landfills, residential and commercial rooftops, and parking lots. 

The state closed its public comment period on February 9, and will now develop a straw proposal incorporating the feedback it received. While the details are yet unknown, there is wide agreement among stakeholders that the Healey administration is serious about supporting solar.

“She has chosen a veritable dream team to manage energy for the commonwealth, and I am confident they are going to find their way forward to some good solid solutions,” D’Arbeloff said. “But it is complicated and challenging.”

As Massachusetts solar growth lags, stakeholders debate changes to state incentives is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Massachusetts utilities, regulators, and lawmakers are beginning to chart their next steps following an order issued two months ago that signaled the beginning of the end of natural gas in the state.

While hailed as a transformational win by clean energy advocates, the Dec. 6 decision is light on specifics, instead laying out broad, guiding principles that stakeholders will need to convert into policy.

“The order poses the questions, but doesn’t answer them for the most part,” said state Sen. Michael Barrett, chair of the joint telecommunications, utilities, and energy committee. “It’s an opening statement in the huge conversation Massachusetts needs to have about truly reducing the footprint of the gas system in the state.”

The order tops off a three-year investigation into how gas utilities can help Massachusetts achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Released by the Department of Public Utilities, the document sets an explicit policy goal of transitioning from natural gas and rejects utilities’ proposal to integrate renewable natural gas as a route to decarbonization. It also calls for gas and electric utilities to coordinate their planning and requires policies to ensure the transition doesn’t financially burden lower-income residents. 

“The most amazing part – and the part that I never thought I would see – is it’s actually saying we as a state need to reduce our emissions and you as a public utility need to be an active part of this,” says Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy for the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “I think that’s the first time in this country that such a standard has been applied.”

Utility companies, the legislature, and state regulators still have to lay out concrete strategies for translating the ideas in the order into meaningful change, advocates said.

Utilities

Perhaps the most pressing question, advocates said, is the issue of coordination between electric and gas utilities. While the two providers often have the same name and corporate parent — National Grid or Eversource, for example — the gas and electric sides of the business are run as separate companies, with distinct leadership, decision-making, and regulatory requirements.

Though the gas and electric companies are legally allowed to share information and ideas, it is unclear how often they do so, Rabin said. The transition from gas, however, makes communication between the two essential: The electric side will need to do extensive planning to make sure it is ready to deal with surging demand as buildings transition from gas heat to electric heat pumps.

To some degree, this move is already underway: At the end of January, electric utilities filed state-mandated Electric System Modernization Plans that propose upgrades, investments, and programs to accommodate increased load on the grid over the next 10 years. The proposals promise billions of dollars in investments, call for dramatic expansion of grid capacity and technology upgrades, and outline plans to engage lower-income residents and communities of color in the ongoing process. 

“They were already on the track of ‘everything is going to be electrified,’ so it should be relatively aligned,” said Caitlin Peale Sloan, vice president for Massachusetts at the Conservation Law Foundation. “Most of the changes are on the gas utilities, where they have to reformat their business model to deal with this.”

Efforts at coordination across utilities, however, need to look at more than the big picture, said Audrey Schulman, co-executive director of climate solutions nonprofit HEET. If the gas company needs to decide what to do about a length of leaky pipe, there should be processes in place for it to determine whether the wires and substations in that specific neighborhood could handle a switch from gas to electric, and how to get them ready for the change, she said. 

“They need to ask: What is the best method by which this street can be transitioned to electricity for everything at the least cost and in the most efficient, synergistic way?” Schulman said. “My hope is it will force utilities to talk to each other.”

Regulators

Though the Department of Public Utilities was the one to issue the order, it also needs to modify some of its internal processes and policies to adhere to the guidelines it laid out. To some degree, the details will be worked out as the department is asked to rule on filings. 

“There will be a first mover who ends up setting the precedent — the next one up to file a rate case will have to deal with some of these issues,” Rabin said.

Already, the utilities have submitted a joint request for the department to clarify certain details about the order’s requirement for considering alternatives to further pipeline investment, its timeline for certain provisions, and the methodology for calculating emissions reductions. 

Additionally, however, regulators will likely need to start more of their own investigations, like the one that led to the December order. The department has already started this learning process: In early January, it launched an investigation into energy affordability with the goal of better understanding the cost burden on low-income households and how state programs can ease that weight, particularly as the clean energy transition could drive some costs higher.

More such formalized research will also be needed, Rabin said. 

“There need to be more orders laying out exactly how this is going to happen, because it is a very different business proposition for certainly the gas utilities but also the electric utilities,” she said. “We should start laying out exactly how this stuff is going to work.”

Though the regulators have a lot of work ahead of them, advocates and other stakeholders expressed optimism that the department, under the administration of Gov. Maura Healey, is taking the need to move to clean energy more seriously than under previous governors. 

“The most important thing here is that it signals a real turning of the page,” Barrett said. 

Legislators

New legislation will likely be needed to enable and ease the way for some of the actions envisioned in the order. 

Advocates pointed to several details that may need legislative intervention. State law, for example, includes an “obligation to serve” provision that some have interpreted as requiring the state to allow gas companies to provide connections; tweaks to this language would allow regulators to more firmly prevent extension of gas service. New legislation could also lay out ways for the state to stop utilities from passing on the cost of new hookups to its base of ratepayers. 

Lawmakers will likely wait for specific guidance from regulators and the administration, however, before pushing these measures, Sloan said. 

“The legislature is still looking largely to the [Department of Public Utilities] to tee up very specific statutory changes that might be needed,” she said. “Legislators feel that we need to proceed carefully and they’re going to want to hear from the administration.”

At the same time, Barrett said, the most important thing the legislature can do right now to help accelerate the transition away from natural gas is to address siting and permitting reform, making it easier to build renewable energy projects and deliver the power they generate. And the December order, he said, is a welcome sign that the administrative and regulatory climate is right for action.

“The [department] is saying that real steps need to be taken,” he said. “The legislature will welcome the moral clarity and will respond beginning in 2024.”

More questions than answers after Massachusetts order to transition from natural gas is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Charging electric vehicles in Massachusetts could get less expensive under a pair of utility proposals now under consideration, but advocates are arguing for tweaks they say would make the transition faster and more fair. 

A 2022 state climate law requires the state’s two major electric companies, Eversource and National Grid, to submit proposals for so-called time-of-use rates offering lower prices to electric vehicle owners who charge their cars during times of lower demand hours. The utilities did so in August 2023, proposing off-peak rates they say could save users hundreds of dollars a year compared to basic service rates. 

Climate advocates generally support the time-of-use concept. Lowering the cost of charging could motivate potential buyers as the state tries to hit its goal of getting 900,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030, they argue. Shifting vehicle charging to off-peak hours could also lower power use during peak times, reducing the need to fire up older, dirtier fossil fuel power plants to meet demand. 

Still, stakeholders said, there is room for improvement in everything from the process of collecting public feedback to the precise calculations behind the rates. 

“We are very supportive of time-of-use rates, broadly speaking,” said Oliver Tully, director of utility innovation and reform at climate nonprofit the Acadia Center. “We want to make sure these initial plans are as strong as possible.” 

Hearing from the public

In considering the utilities’ proposals, the Department of Public Utilities is trying out a new strategy: They have asked the utilities themselves to collect feedback from the public. The goal is to hear from parties that might not have qualified to be formal intervenors in the case, said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.

“They’re saying: We want you to talk about this and come to an agreement because the [Department of Public Utilities] process limits who’s in the room for the conversation,” she said. 

While she appreciates the aim of opening the discussion to more voices, however, she isn’t confident the utilities, left to their own devices, will create enough opportunities for feedback.

“It’s not an impartial third party running the stakeholder process,” she said. 

The utilities had a first meeting scheduled to take place online today, which Eversource spokesman William Hinkle called, “the first of a series.”

Timely rollout

The timeline laid out by the utilities is also of concern to some advocates. The utilities do not want to roll out these rates before they deploy advanced meters and software, and then have a year’s worth of experience with the new system “to ensure network stability,” according to Eversource’s filing. By the utility estimates, this timeline would mean the new rate option would be unlikely to kick in before 2029. 

Many advocates don’t think it’s necessary to wait quite so long, however. Other states, such as Vermont and California, have implemented time-of-use rates for electric vehicle charging without requiring advanced meters. Data from chargers or the vehicles themselves can be used to determine how much power was used for charging and when, allowing for billing at different rates. 

“You can implement basic time-of-use rates without a smart meter,” Tully said. “If you allow for submetering using charging technology you should be able to accurately do that.”

Getting started now, instead of waiting for advanced metering, could also make the launch of time-of-use rates go more smoothly, said Graham Turk, a graduate research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative. Any new rate structure is going to need adjustments once it is introduced. 

“The earlier they do that, the better,” Turk said. The current proposal would “just push that farther down the line when [electric vehicles] are a lot more prevalent and it’s a lot harder to do this for the first time.”

Getting the rates right

Lower rates during off-peak hours may not be enough on their own to recruit new electric vehicle drivers, many experts said. Getting the precise numbers right will be vital. 

“The real challenge is going to be in ensuring that the rate structure is something that encourages people to participate, but doesn’t punish people for using electricity outside of the time-of-use rate hours,” said Priya Gandbhir, senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation. 

The utilities’ filings include example numbers for what an electric vehicle charging time-of-use rate might look like, but do not propose specific rates yet, given how much could change in the market and regulations over the next five years. In each of these illustrative cases, the cost of off-peak vehicle charging is substantially lower than the cost of basic service, while the cost of on-peak charging is significantly higher. 

That makes rough sense, advocates said, but when the real numbers are determined, a delicate balance must be struck. If the difference between on-peak and off-peak rates is too small, it won’t do enough to motivate more people to consider electric vehicles. At the same time, if the gap is too big, then a few on-peak charges could mean a bigger bill than under basic service rates, effectively punishing some consumers if a sudden change in schedule alters their charging times.

“Basically, when people’s bills come through at the end of the month they should be able to see some savings, regardless,” Gandbhir said. “They shouldn’t have to be perfect.”

Ensuring equity

As all these complicated decisions are made, it is essential to keep in mind the effects these changes could have on lower-income populations in the state, said Mary Wambui-Ekop, a longtime energy equity activist and co-chair of the equity working group for the state’s Energy Efficiency Advisory Council.

She worries that the overall cost of a major transition toward a new metering system and time-of-use rates could add to the already high energy burden of low-income households. In Massachusetts, households earning under 30% of the average median income pay 13% of their earnings to energy costs, as compared to 2% for households at or above median income. 

“The bottom line is low-income households in Massachusetts, Black and brown households, have higher energy burdens,” Wambui-Ekop said. 

At the same time, residents working multiple jobs, living in rental units, and just trying to keep up might not have the time, education, or internet access to learn about and weigh new and potentially cost-saving options. 

There is precedent for this concern: Lower-income households have also been left behind in other pushes for renewable energy or energy efficiency in the state. A 2020 report by the utilities, for example, found that residents of wealthier communities were far more likely to have taken advantage of energy efficiency programs than those in lower-income areas and neighborhoods with higher populations of color. 

Plans for time-of-use rates — for electric vehicle charging or beyond — must therefore include careful plans for making sure historically disadvantaged communities can share in the benefits and avoid shouldering the burden, Wambui-Ekop said.

“I am not opposed to time-of-use rates,” she said, “They are great in a perfect market. Unfortunately, the market system has not been fair to low-income households.”

Mass. drivers will save money charging EVs at night — but when and how much? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

New Hampshire’s energy department is preparing to road-test a grant program meant to help disadvantaged cities and towns access the environmental and financial benefits of solar power. 

The state plans to use $1.4 million from the 2021 federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to help fund the installation of solar projects up to 60 kilowatts on municipal buildings or land. The grant will cover up to 95% of the costs of a qualifying solar project for lower-income cities and towns and 60% for other municipalities. 

In addition to cutting carbon emissions, solar can also make a community more resilient in case of power outages. And using it to power municipal facilities can save money that can be reinvested in public projects or used to hold down property tax rates in the long-term. 

The funding application has been submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy, and New Hampshire is now in “wait-and-see mode,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs in the state energy department. 

The state is also looking at the program as something of a trial run, to see if it makes sense to continue and expand the grant offering in the future. 

“We’re looking at this program as almost the guinea pig to see what demand is out there, what can we do, what we can improve,” Elliott said. “Then we’ll use this process to inform what potentially a [larger] municipal program could look like.”

New Hampshire lags behind

As a whole, New Hampshire lags the region in solar adoption. The state ranks 41st in the country for installed solar capacity, behind even lower-population New England states like Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. State policies to encourage solar are limited, with incentives for residential solar maxing out at $1,000 per project and rebates for commercial solar limited to $10,000. 

On the municipal level, though, many New Hampshire cities and towns are very interested in solar power. For example, in Hanover, a more affluent town and the home of Dartmouth College, solar arrays provide nearly all the power used by municipal facilities. Smaller towns and those with lower average incomes, however, often have a harder time realizing their solar goals.  

New Hampshire property owners already have one of the highest property tax burdens in the country, so proposing that the residents of small, disadvantaged towns pay more to install solar is a big ask, even if there could be financial benefits down the line. Beyond the issue of funding, there are the logistics: researching options, hiring consultants, assessing different grant options.

“If you have the idea that you want solar on the town hall, you have to go from the idea to the implementation,” said Margaret Byrnes, executive director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association. “For municipalities that don’t have that internal staff, it’s a significant lift.”

The grant program aims to lighten that burden. And to maximize the benefits these towns can achieve, the grant guidelines encourage municipalities to skip entering into leasing arrangements and instead buy their solar arrays outright, so they retain the rights to sell renewable energy credits.

“We want all of those benefits flowing to the community itself,” Elliott said. 

Small towns eager for solar grants

Colebrook, a town of roughly 2,000 people just 10 miles south of the Canadian border, is looking at the grant program as a potential way to fund a solar array on the roof of its town hall. Tourism is the main economic driver in the remote and scenic town, and there is little industry and few high-paying jobs. The median household income in town is just over $48,000, well below the state median of $91,000. 

“We can’t just go out and ask for $150,000 from the town to foot the bill” for a solar project, said Colebrook town manager Tim Stevens. “Any time you have to go back to the town and ask for more money than you did before, that has a negative impact on them.”

Hinsdale, a small town near the state’s southern border, has plans to open its transfer station full-time and hopes to build a solar array on the site to help power the operation. A recent report, however, found that most residents’ property taxes had increased between 25% and 48% between 2018 and 2022, making it challenging to ask for yet more money. And there’s a bridge in town that needs to be rebuilt and other pressing infrastructure issues. 

“Unfortunately, solar is not on that priority list,” said Josh Green, Hinsdale’s community development coordinator. 

He estimates that a 60-kilowatt array at the transfer station would cost about $260,000. With the grant, the town would only have to pay about $13,000 of that total tab. 

“The solar grant would definitely help the town out tremendously,” Green said.

Though the planned grant program is modest in size — the total budget will likely be able to fund only a handful of projects — it is well-tailored to the needs of the state, said Melissa Elander of Clean Energy New Hampshire, a nonprofit advocacy group that has been working with municipalities in the northern part of the state to prepare for the launch of the grants.

“It’s a good fit to focus on smaller towns that often get forgotten in some of the larger grant programs,” she said. “I am thrilled that it’s going to be available at all.”

Grants would help less affluent New Hampshire towns invest in public solar projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.