Bedford Energy Commission approves edits to Community Power plan after PUC comments

The Bedford Energy Commission voted May 22 to approve two updates to its Community Power (CPCNH) enrollment plan requested by the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, the commission chair said.

The changes—updating the plan’s “rights and responsibilities” section to direct complaints to the New Hampshire Department of Energy rather than the commission, and revising the rate-comparison table to reflect supply rates effective Feb. 1, 2025—were presented by Jean Walker, assistant town manager. Walker said the edits follow a PUC letter and are intended to make the plan’s information accurate and current.

The commission’s approval ends a review prompted by the PUC’s March correspondence. Walker told the panel that the PUC noted the rights-and-responsibilities language on page 13 and asked that complaints against regulated utilities be filed with the state Department of Energy. She also said the rate chart on page 9 should show supply rates effective Feb. 1, 2025, so comparisons are not misleading.

Chair John Russell, who presided over the meeting after being elected chair earlier that evening, and other commissioners discussed the rate-chart revision and displayed the spring 2025 historical-rate table during their review. The table shown at the meeting listed spring 2025 Eversource supply at 0.0893 per kilowatt-hour versus a CPCNH granite-basic rate of 0.097 per kilowatt-hour for Bedford; presenters noted those figures meant the Eversource supply rate briefly moved below the CPCNH rate in that sample period.

Commissioners and staff emphasized that the chart should reflect the most recent published supply rates so the plan does not give a misleading impression that CPCNH is systematically lower when short-term market moves can change that relationship. “We’re not going to launch unless the CPCNH rate is lower than Eversource,” Chair John Russell said at the meeting when describing the town’s enrollment threshold.

A motion to approve the proposed changes carried; the commission instructed staff to incorporate the approved redlines into a final document and transmit it to the PUC in the same manner the commission used previously.

The approval is procedural: no new enrollment or procurement commitments were made at the meeting. The commission also discussed related developments in regional supply cases—including recent PUC decisions involving Unitil and Eversource—that commissioners said bear on how supply losses or stranded-cost claims might be treated in future rate proceedings.