New Hampshire Utility Offers To Cut Summer Electric Rates

I hesitate to post this. I must be mis-reading something. The local New Hampshire utility wants to cut electricity rates this summer for their customers. It sounds like they want to cut summer rates to sort of "make up" for the high winter rates coming this winter and for the next several years.

You have to love your utility company that asks for a rate decrease in the summer to help offset the pain you will feel this winter.

Anyway, look at the story, and decide for yourself if I am misreading this. Fosters Daily Democrat is reporting:

Until New Hampshire’s infrastructure catches up with the state’s energy demand, the high and unstable prices of electricity during winter months are expected to continue over the next several years, said William Quinlan, the new president and CEO of Public Service of New Hampshire.

This past winter, PSNH customers not only saw “extraordinarily high prices,” but also rates that changed dramatically from month to month, Quinlan said during an editorial board meeting with Foster’s on Wednesday.

“I think it’s an early warning of what the next few winters are going to look like,” he said. “This winter was a wake up call for all of us.”

On Monday, though, PSNH announced it is expecting lower overall rates for customers starting July 1. Despite rate hikes that have previously been predicted, PSNH has asked the state Public Utilities Commission to make a series of adjustments, and if all changes are made, average monthly bills for residents would be reduced by about three-tenths of a percent, according to a statement by PSNH. 

Doesn't that sound like the utility wants to cut rates now to ease the pain you're gonna feel this winter?

Okay, look at the savings they plan to offer: "... if all changes are made, average monthly bills for residents would be reduced by about three-tenths of a percent, according to a statement by PSNH."

That's if all changes are made; if not, the savings won't be quite as significant.

If one has a $100 monthly summer electric bill, the savings would be: $100 x 0.003 = 0.3 cents (over three months, one would save a penny for every $300 in utility charges).

If one has a $250 monthly summer air conditioning bill, the savings would be $250 x 0.003 = 75 cents. Over three months, the savings would be about $2.25. Again, that's if all the changes are "accepted" by the Public Utilities Commission.

Of course the big story is the "several years" of high electric rates during the winter months due to poor planning on the part of public officials.

The whole story is ... well, let's just stay a bit "bizarre." Here's the reality:

New Hampshire’s worrisome reliance on natural gas, said Quinlan, will likely continue to grow, as oil, nuclear, and coal plants have been retiring throughout New England.

He said the Northern Pass project, which initially was proposed from an environmental standpoint as a way to reduce carbon emissions, is increasingly being seen as a critical supply to replace plants that are retiring.

But the energy supply that would come with Northern Pass would only make up for a third of the supply lost due to the plants that are retiring in the next three years, so PSNH will be looking at additional solutions, including wind and solar power and improving gas pipe infrastructure. [These folks are in real trouble.]

Although wind and solar power can be part of the solution, by themselves will not be enough to prevent an energy crisis in future years, because those systems cannot provide power at all hours of the day. [Oh, I don't know. I understand why solar might not be able to provide power "at all hours of the day" but certainly the wind blows 24 hours /day. LOL. I can't make this stuff up.]

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Sweet Caroline, Neil Diamond  

This was following the Boston Marathon bombing.

I have to admit I have extremely fond memories of New England. I first visited Boston in the summer of 1973. Years later our second granddaughter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Then several years later we spent much of the next four years in Boston, on and off taking care of our two granddaughters through their first years of elementary school in Belmont, a suburb of Boston. Fenway Park really was that green. I saw my first "live" professional baseball game in Boston in 1973, and saw Fenway Park again when we visited Belmont.

I listened to Neil Diamond throughout my high school years in Williston, and I would have sworn that I listened to "Sweet Caroline" numerous times driving back and forth between Williston and Blacktail Dam north of the city during the summer of 1969. The song was released in May, 1969, so it's possible. My journal records that the group I most associate with the summer of 1969, however, is Creedence Clearwater Revival. And so it goes.

I don't feel a day older.

  Lookin' Out My Back Door, Creedence Clearwater Revival