Six New Hampshire utilities, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Consumer Advocate and five other organizations have asked the Public Utilities Commission to approve a settlement on the 2027-2029 NHSaves energy efficiency plan. The settlement, filed Nov. 5, would set a minimum on-bill loan size and add a new performance incentive tied to active demand response.
The Commission's Sept. 8 order scheduled hearings for Nov. 12 and Nov. 16 and says the schedule fits its goal, reflected in the triennial plan statute, of a decision before Nov. 30. The docket, DE 26-043, has no entry after Nov. 6, so it does not show what happened at the Nov. 12 session or whether the Nov. 16 session, which the order said could be canceled if unnecessary, will be held.
The settling parties are Eversource, New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, Unitil Energy Systems, Northern Utilities and two Liberty subsidiaries, plus the Department of Energy, the consumer advocate, Clean Energy New Hampshire, the Conservation Law Foundation, Community Action Partnership Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties, the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership and the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire. The utilities filed the plan July 1. The settlement says that apart from a few changes it names, including an updated discount rate calculation and a new demand response offering from the electric cooperative, the plan's changes from the 2024-2026 term are predominantly budgetary and administrative and leave most program structure and offerings unchanged.
The settlement changes the financing offered to homeowners. Utilities would file tariffs providing on-bill financing of at least $7,500, with a repayment term of at least four years for loans of $7,500 or more. Interest on those loans stays at zero percent. A utility that caps on-bill financing at $7,500 must offer third-party financing at zero percent to qualifying customers. Electric utilities with a $15,000 ceiling must make heat pumps and heat pump water heaters eligible. Financing under the Home Energy Performance program could also pay, in part or in full, for fixing auditor-recommended health and safety barriers that are critical to installing weatherization measures safely, as long as the fix does not compromise the overall project's cost-effectiveness.
The settlement also changes the performance incentive utilities can earn. A new active demand response component would make up 6 percent of design-level incentives. It would pay based on actual versus planned active demand savings, with a minimum threshold of 65 percent of planned savings and a cap of 125 percent. The share for passive summer peak demand savings would fall from 12 percent to 9 percent and the winter share from 8 percent to 5 percent, so active and passive demand components together remain 20 percent.
Other terms include a heating and cooling comparison calculator for heat pumps, targeted for July 31, 2027; a freeze on changes to Home Heating Index thresholds from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2027; public quarterly reporting on marketing metrics; and a customer study that would collect home type, rental or owner-occupied status and primary heating fuel for participants in two programs.
The settlement is conditioned on the Commission accepting every provision without change. If the Commission does not, each party may amend or end it or seek reconsideration.
