At a heated meeting in Bow earlier this month, the town’s board of selectmen voted unanimously to withdraw from the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, beginning a months-long process to transfer all residents out of a community power program and back to their default utility company rates.
Town officials called the coalition’s initial pitch, which brought the hope of less expensive electricity and more renewable energy, “reckless.” One selectman characterized the current rates as a “death spiral.” Multiple people on the board said they felt misled.
“We were told community power was going to save us money. That's not what's happening here,” said selectperson Angela Brennan, who was a supporter of the program. “I’m really frustrated because I wanted this to work.”
Bow joined the coalition through Merrimack County’s program about three years ago, as dozens of communities across New Hampshire elected to adopt community power. The coalition has grown to serve nearly 200,000 customers, making them the second-largest supplier of electricity in New Hampshire.
All Bow residents started getting electricity supply from the coalition, unless they opted out. Until last year, being enrolled in community power meant ratepayers were saving money. By late 2024, the coalition says they saved customers more than $20 million and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 10,957 tons, roughly the equivalent of taking 2,500 gas cars off the road for a year.
But in 2025, the Community Power Coalition’s rates started to jump. Now, they are uniformly higher than default utility rates. For customers of the coalition, the basic electricity supply rate that began in early February is between 14 and 14.9 cents per kilowatt hour. Utility default rates at this time range from 11 cents to 13 cents.
The higher rates come on the heels of a difficult year for the Community Power Coalition, in which the organization lost about $8 million and parted ways with its former chief executive officer.
Bow is the second town to leave the coalition in the wake of rate hikes. Last year, Wilmot, another town that enrolled through Merrimack County’s program, pulled out. In Dover, city officials voted to move some city accounts for large energy users, like an ice arena, off community power and back to Eversource.
As concern over the coalition’s rates grows, other towns have encouraged residents to consider opting out of the program on their own, which individual customers can do at any time.
Why are rates higher?
Last winter, the Community Power Coalition set rates too low, didn’t protect against market conditions, and then had to purchase expensive wholesale power. To make up for the loss, the coalition drew on their financial reserves – a fund that can be used to develop local energy projects, but also serves as insurance that can be used to stabilize rates.
Now, the organization is trying to build their reserve fund back up. The current rates include an additional cost for building those reserves.
“By building community reserves, that will create longer term savings and opportunities for future rate relief,” said Henry Herndon, the coalition’s acting general manager.
Herndon also noted that one of the goals of the Community Power Coalition is to increase competition in energy markets, driving down rates from all suppliers, including the traditional utility companies that the coalition is competing with.
In 2024, New Hampshire regulators approved new ways for regulated utilities to purchase power, allowing them to buy electricity from a short-term market instead of locking in costs for six months at a time. While utility default rates have dropped, that method may expose customers to new risks, requiring them to make up for under-estimation of rates in future months.
Herndon said community power programs also have more benefits than rate savings.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he said. “It’s about local control. It's about customer choice. It’s about market innovation. It’s about building local energy projects.”
The broader scope of the Community Power Coalition’s goals is one thing that sets it apart from other businesses in New Hampshire that are operating community power programs, including Freedom Energy, which recently partnered with the town of Merrimack to launch a program.
Standard Power, another community power provider, has also faced issues with charging communities higher rates than utilities. Recently, those communities have costs that are lower than or comparable with utilities.
Frustration from towns
The Community Power Coalition grew so fast in part because towns and cities defaulted their residents, with few exceptions, into the program automatically. Individual households can opt out on their own.
In Bow, town officials expressed frustration at the challenges some residents faced when trying to opt out of the program and switch back to their utility company’s default energy service.
Some residents reported issues with the coalition’s customer service, officials said. And for people in Bow, who get their power from Unitil, when they leave community power they’re placed onto a “variable rate” until the next six-month rate cycle begins. Depending on the time of year, that variable rate can be more expensive than default energy.
Amanda Vicinanzo, a spokesperson for Unitil, said the company could not retroactively assign customers a default rate because it reflects the average cost of electricity over the whole rate cycle. She also said the company believes in consumer choice and encourages customers to explore all options, including third-party suppliers.
Bow officials also expressed frustration that the process for the whole community to leave the Community Power Coalition could take between several months and three years. The coalition says that timeline is meant to make sure costs are not shifted on to other communities.
At a January public meeting in Dover, city councilor Fergus Cullen expressed concern over residents paying more for power because they had been defaulted into community power programs, and said the city should consider pulling all residents out.
“I said six months ago that I was concerned that this well-intended experiment might be failing,” he said. “The rate increase is still there. I think we have to acknowledge that it may be failing and that we have a responsibility to turn this back over to Dover individual homeowners to make that decision.”
Dover officials decided to pull major city accounts out of community power, but keep the program going for some city power needs and for residents who were already opted in.
Lucas Veitch, a city councilor in Dover, has been a supporter of community power. He wanted to keep all major city accounts with the coalition instead of switching back to Eversource.
He said the past several months have brought new doubts. He’s concerned about the financial issues that have caused the organization to raise rates. But, he said, he still believes in the fundamental mission of the coalition.
“They need to right some of the things that went wrong and then just continue to do that and build back up that trust over some time,” he said. “Hopefully they can collect reserves and build that back up, so that would be in good shape and hopefully they’ll be more competitive in future periods.”
