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On December 19th the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission (PUC) issued an order in the Public Service Company of New Hampshire (Eversource) regarding the utilities February 1, 2026 to July 31, 2026 rates and addresses energy service reconciliation/miscalculation balancing issue.  In compliance with this order Eversource filed updated tariff pages with accompanying red-lined tariff pages denoting the changes have been submitted for easy identification of the changes.

Among other things, this order authorizes Eversource “to recover the costs of power supply through default energy service (Energy Service) rates for effect for the six-month period of February 1, 2026, to July 31, 2026. The updated Energy Service rate for Eversource’s Small Customer Group, which includes residential customers taking Energy Service from Eversource, is 11.303 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), which will result in an increase in overall monthly bills for a typical residential customer using 650 kWh monthly and taking Energy Service from Eversource of approximately 0.4 percent, or 70 cents, compared to current rates. (The increase in the energy component of Energy Service customers’ bills is approximately 1 percent; the Company has indicated in its petition that this increase is largely related to recent increases in market electricity prices). This rate includes a charge of 0.920 cents per kWh for Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) compliance costs.

From the Commission Analysis:

December 2025 Energy Service Petition 

“The Commission again notes that although we do not have regulatory authority over power supply since New Hampshire’s utilities divested themselves of their generation/power supply assets, the Commission has the ability to oversee the procurement process, to ensure robust competition and therefore help in lowering default service prices. We will continue to monitor the outcomes of the Company’s Energy Service processes in the coming rate periods.” 

“In light of this and having heard the advocacy of CPCNH and Freedom Energy in favor of more frequent reconciliations for Energy Service, and the reasons therefor, we hereby ORDER Eversource to include a proposal for the implementation of a six-month reconciliation cycle for Energy Service as part of its petition for August 2026-January 2027 Energy Service rates. Also, we hereby ORDER Eversource to include testimony responding to the potential implementation of a futures-price based proxy-price development methodology along the lines approved in Order No. 28,196 for Unitil as part of its August 2026-January 2027 Energy Service rate petition. We have an expectation that this will provide valuable information for the Commission’s oversight of Energy Service for Eversource going forward.”

Large Customer Reconciliation\Misallocation Issue

Another matter addressed in the order included a large customer group reconciliation\misallocation issue. Specifically, material was filed by Eversource in the context of an ongoing Commission review of a purported $6.5 million under-collection balance for the small customer group energy service reconciliation, first presented to the Commission by Eversource for collection in the June 2024 Energy Service petition filed in Docket No. DE 24-046 (see Supplemental Order of Notice, July 17, 2025 -docket tab #22). At that time, the Commission said, “in an abundance of caution, deferred collection of this purported under-collection balance, and ordered the Company to develop further internal information regarding its provenance and cause.”

Subsequentially, the Commission held a hearing on October 23, 2025, regarding this issue, at which representatives of the Company, the DOE, OCA, CPCNH, and Freedom Energy attended. . . .  “Company representatives provided substantially more detail regarding the circumstances of the error resulting in the purported under-collection, stating that, “[o]ut of the $6.5 million under-collection, approximately [$4.5] million of this amount was associated with a single customer and four of their accounts,” elaborating that “…the customers was originally set up on rate LG and should have been set up on rate B.” Tr. at 26. This, in turn, led to a series of further compounding billing errors that over-counted Large Customer Group aggregate load and under-counted Small Customer Group load during the August 2022 to July 2024 period, together with other billing errors involving the Large Customer group.”

In a joint post-hearing briefs filed by CPCNH with Freedom Energy and in CPCNH’s own post-hearing reply brief argued: “CPCNH and Freedom Energy respectfully request the Commission: …To the extent the Commission deems some or all of the $4.012 million portion of its deferred under-recovery reconciliation balance to be just and reasonable, permit Eversource to reallocate those costs at the time of their next default energy service rate for effect on February 1, 2026 over a period of six months; and…Require in the Commission’s order in this docket that Eversource, in its August 1, 2026 default service filing, propose reconciliations updated every six months using actual monthly data.  

“In arguing for more-frequent reconciliations, CPCNH and Freedom Energy argued that such more-frequent reconciliations would serve as a spot check aiding in the prevention of such ongoing errors in the future. Also, in its reply brief, CPCNH raised concerns regarding the inadequacies and potential obsolescence of the Company’s billing and load-settlement systems.”

The Commission ruled “having reviewed the evidence before us, and the arguments presented by Eversource and the other parties to this proceeding regarding the Company’s errors leading to the stated under collection in the Energy Service Small Customer Group reconciliation balance, we hereby ADOPT the requested remedy presented by the DOE, and ORDER that Eversource apply a $1.483 million under-collection balance to the Small Customer Group, to be collected over a six-month period (as also recommended by CPCNH and Freedom Energy, in terms of recovery period). We believe that this DOE-recommended approach offers a fair balance between the need to avoid retroactive ratemaking, and unfair burdening of current Small Customer Group Energy Service customers far-temporally removed from old, misallocated costs, with the need to rectify accounting errors that under-charged Small Customer Group customers for recent Energy Service load. As acknowledged by many of the parties, the temporal boundaries of “retroactive ratemaking” under New Hampshire law are murky, and our disposition of this matter in line with the DOE recommendation in this instance does not limit our potential disposition of similar matters in the future.”

DE 25-017
(Public Service Company of New Hampshire d/b/a Eversource Energy – 2025 Energy Service Solicitations)