The NH process of connecting power slows down clean energy projects

According to Eversource's latest report, about 470 megawatts of distributed energy projects, mostly solar, are expected in the interconnection pipeline. If these projects were built, the amount of solar energy currently generated in New Hampshire would more than double.

New Hampshire is following the lead of other New England states in building renewable energy sources. But solar projects are under development across the state. More than a hundred have cleared the first hurdle in the development process: finding a location. But they were stuck for several months, waiting in line for something called an interconnection study.

Before any energy project can be built, utilities look at how it will fit into the power system as a whole and whether they will need to upgrade the poles, wires, substations and transformers that deliver new electricity to homes and businesses to be able to handle the increased power.

Solar developers say the line for testing at Eversource, the state’s largest utility, is like I-93 on a holiday weekend: slow and frustrating.

According to Eversource’s latest report, about 470 megawatts of distributed energy projects, mostly solar, are expected in the interconnection pipeline. If these projects were built, the amount of solar energy currently generated in New Hampshire would more than double.

Three developers – Rewild Renewables, Lodestar Energy and Kearsarge Solar – have filed a complaint with the New Hampshire Department of Energy, alleging that Eversource has delayed their projects, violated state laws on supporting small energy projects and prevented municipalities from saving money on energy and cutting greenhouse gases.

In a complaint filed in March, the companies said they had submitted merger applications for 28 projects over a 19-month period. As of the date of filing the complaint, none of these projects had a network connection agreement. The companies said that for 20 projects, Eversource has not yet gone beyond determining that their applications are complete. One of them already has an interconnection agreement, according to a filing Eversource filed in May.

“There is no technical or electrical reason for them to be held up,” said Matthew Doubleday, director of interconnections at Rewild Renewables. “They could have moved forward. But for some reason, whether it’s resources or something else, they don’t continue.”

Doubleday, based in New Hampshire and working primarily on community solar projects, has ten projects in Eversource’s pipeline. Two of them, submitted in February and June last year, are the only pending projects at the substation in question, meaning they should have been prioritized first, according to Doubleday. Eversource hasn’t learned yet either, he said.

“Community solar projects around the world face interconnection hurdles. “New Hampshire is unique in that it is currently the only state where the hurdle we face is college entry,” Doubleday said.

Eversource defended itself against the companies’ claims, asking the New Hampshire Department of Energy to dismiss their complaint.

“Eversource makes every effort to process project applications as quickly as possible while meeting all legal and regulatory requirements,” the company wrote in response to the complaint.

In its response, the company also noted that solar developers have resized some projects and withdrawn others, which has slowed the process. In response to developer complaints, the company said longer wait times “are not unusual for large project proposals that the applicant changes materially, sometimes multiple times, and is not necessarily unreasonable given the factors described in this response” .

An influx of interest

New Hampshire utilities have seen historic growth in interconnection applications.

Alec O’Meara, a spokesman for Unitil, said the company processed about 200 applications a year between 2019 and 2021, which was its highest. 900 were processed in 2023. The company manages additional applications by hiring outside staff during busy periods and working to move more of the application process online.

Colin Manning, spokesman for the New Hampshire Electric Co-Op, said the number of applications has more than doubled in the last five years and they are trying to streamline the process and educate members about what to include in applications.

Liberty Utilities declined to comment on the interconnection queue.

At Eversource, the company went from processing 20 requests a week to receiving about 100 and sometimes more than 200 over the past five years, according to spokesman William Hinkle.

The company’s engineering department dealt with interconnections as part of a broader effort. Currently, three people work full-time and one part-time on “customer services,” which deals with network connection requests, with help from staff from other teams. Eversource also says it has hired contractors, updated its software systems and updated staff training.

Hinkle said 95% of interconnection requests – mostly smaller projects – should be approved “within a few days.”

Medium-sized projects use a “fast” process, which Hinkle says takes about 60 to 90 days. Larger projects are characterized by long waiting times.

Doubleday acknowledges that Eversource is coping with the increase in interconnection load.

“But that’s the reality everywhere, in many states,” he said. “It has been almost two years since they saw such an increase and the queue has only grown. We have not seen much improvement in projects moving through the queue in a manner consistent with industry standards.”

ReWild Renewables has projects with Eversource in Massachusetts, and Doubleday says it hasn’t seen the same level of delays there, especially for projects that are first in line at their substation. Utilities in Maine, which has similar electrical grid requirements to New Hampshire, are also running faster, according to Doubleday.

When asked about the average turnaround time for interconnection applications in the three states where it operates, Eversource said the time frame is fairly consistent in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Hinkle noted that projects often have too many variables to provide an average time frame, and for larger projects, the deadline may be controlled by the regional grid operator.

Barriers to interconnection

While developers say they are experiencing particularly challenging interconnection issues in New Hampshire, the process of connecting new energy sources to the grid is a nationwide problem, said Sam Evans-Brown, director of Clean Energy New Hampshire.

This process currently appears as a “major obstacle” to the further clean energy transition, he said.

Across the U.S., states and network operators are tackling interconnection differently as many grapple with growth in applications and work to develop a more efficient process. How quickly this happens could impact the reductions in climate-warming emissions the country will be able to achieve in the coming years.

In Texas, which has led the nation in added wind power and second in solar added over the past decade, the grid operator is using an approach called “plug and manage.” Developers may take the risk of reducing power output in the event of network congestion, rather than analyzing and developing broader upgrades prior to projects.

In some states, utilities have started looking at projects in groups so that developers can spread the costs of modernization across multiple projects. Eversource says the method is already being used in Massachusetts and is just starting to be implemented in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire is one of 17 states currently earning a “D” rating from Freeing the Grid, an initiative evaluating interconnection procedures across the country led by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council and Vote Solar. Every other New England state has the letter “C”. New Mexico is the only “A” state.

Freeing the Grid says New Hampshire does not have any of the criteria considered in the assessment. This includes having specific interconnection review schedules, sharing data, and having specific dispute resolution processes. What saves New Hampshire from an “F” rating is the fact that it has statewide interconnection procedures at all.

“In New Hampshire, we have a paradigm where utilities decide the schedule,” Evans-Brown said. “They decide the standards. They determine what equipment you install at the interconnection point.”

He added that there is little incentive for utilities to speed up the interconnection process. They are not allowed to own energy-producing facilities, with a small exception. Companies typically make profits by building infrastructure. Conducting interconnection research does not directly make money. Proponents thus argue that utilities are not motivated – at least not by profit – to improve interconnection processes.

“The reality is that it costs them money to hire staff to do more of these tests. So they have an active interest in trying to do it as cheaply as possible,” Evans-Brown said.

Clean Energy New Hampshire is advocating for a new regulatory model in New Hampshire that would reward utilities based on their performance on various benchmarks, one of which could be the speed at which they are able to connect generators to the grid.

The legislation offers a potential solution

The bill, which was intended to be implemented, failed in the state Senate this year.

But efforts to get the state Department of Energy to implement interconnection rules have moved forward.

This proposal comes after an interconnection investigation by the state Department of Energy, which was ordered to study the issue under the 2022 Act. Their investigation concluded in a report that recommended the creation of working groups to further examine the issue and make recommendations.

The department opposed an initial version of the bill that would have required officials to implement interconnection rules by the end of 2024, arguing that the timeline was unreasonable and that the Legislature should allow working groups to reach consensus on what the rules would look like.

Now the Department of Energy would have 15 months to submit draft regulations. Lawmakers say they should establish “cost-effective, timely and predictable processes for customer generators seeking to connect to the state electric grid.”