NH bill would require utilities to plan opt‑in advanced meters; utilities and DOE warn of costs

Representative Kat McGee (Hillsborough 35) introduced House Bill 692 on Feb. 18, asking utilities to deliver to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) a timeline and plan for making “advanced” interval metering available to customers on an opt‑in basis.

McGee told the Science, Technology and Energy Committee the bill is intended to speed up access to metering that competitive suppliers and community power programs need to offer time‑sensitive pricing and other services. The bill would require utilities that have not implemented interval and advanced meter functionality to file a plan by Nov. 1, 2026, that shows how remaining meters could be converted and how any incremental cost would be allocated to the opting customer rather than shifted to all ratepayers.

Why it matters: Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and interval meters record consumption in sub‑hourly intervals and enable features such as time‑of‑use charging, transactive energy and more granular settlement. Supporters say the meters are a precondition for competitive suppliers, community aggregations and distributed energy resources to provide new rate designs and services that can lower costs and smooth peaks.

Key debate points - Cost and back‑office work: Eversource and Unitil told the committee that the meter is only one component of AMI. Michael Licata of Eversource said meters, communications networks, meter data management (“head end”) and customer information/billing systems would all require upgrades before AMI functionality can be realized. Eversource’s most recent feasibility work cited system replacement scenarios with total costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. - Pace of replacement: McGee and others said utilities already replace a few thousand meters a year and that, by using forward‑compatible meters and cloud‑based interim data services, migration could happen incrementally. Witnesses from vendors described subscription cloud services and cellular‑meter options that can be deployed on smaller groups of customers for low annual per‑meter fees in pilot settings. - Who pays: The Department of Energy (DOE) said it was neutral but raised cost‑shifting concerns. DOE staff suggested that if customers opt in, the cost responsibility needs to be clear; the department also questioned whether the PUC or DOE is the appropriate body to direct utilities on the matter.

What the bill would do House Bill 692 would: - Require utilities regulated by the PUC to file a plan by Nov. 1, 2026, setting out a timeline to enable interval/advanced metering available to customers on an opt‑in basis. - Allow recovery of prudently incurred incremental costs associated with customers who request advanced meters, and direct the PUC to provide timely cost recovery.

Context and numbers cited in the hearing - Eversource testimony: company estimates for a full AMI conversion in prior filings ranged in the hundreds of millions of dollars; an example feasibility study cited totals in the roughly $394M–$473M range (company estimate, testified). - Meter replacement pace: utilities reported replacing roughly 5,000–13,000 meters a year in filings and testimony; New Hampshire’s total customer meters were cited in the hundreds of thousands. - Vendor pilot pricing: a cloud‑based subscription data service was described in testimony as costing on the order of a few dollars per meter per year in a small‑scale deployment (vendor example in testimony).

Meeting takeaways The committee heard technical and policy tradeoffs: sponsors and competitive suppliers pressed for faster access to interval data to enable competitive offerings, while utilities and DOE emphasized system‑level costs, the need for coordinated back‑office upgrades and risk of cost shifting. The public hearing closed with the bill subject to the committee’s further deliberation; no committee vote on HB 692 occurred during this meeting.

Ending: If the PUC or the Legislature moves to require faster AMI adoption, the debate at the hearing shows that the practical constraint is not the physical meter alone but the software, settlement and billing systems that must be upgraded or supplanted before the meters’ full functionality can be used.