Meeting Minutes 1/28/2025

Epping Community Power Meeting Minutes 1/28/2025

(Certain abbreviations used in the following minutes report: Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire – CPCNH; Epping Community Power – ECP; New Hampshire Electric Co-Op- NHEC)

1900 Meeting Called to Order and Pledge of Allegiance recited

1905 The committee introduces individual members and Michael reiterates what ECP does and our goals

Updates:

On 1/2/25 CPCNH released a news release that power rates were going to change to 8.9 cents/kWh on 2/1/2025. This is in contrast to Eversource rates changing to 8.929 cents/kWh and NHEC changing to 8.1 cents/kWh. 

For a home using 700 kWh/month this is an additional charge of $7/month by staying with ECP.

CPCNH notes that overall since it’s inception they have helped their member towns save money.

Michael notes that CPCNH is working with the NH state legislature to address potential cost shifting from Eversource power customers to CPCNH customers based on their usage of the spot market instead of the wholesale market. Eversource is hoping to recover any extra costs from spot market purchases that drive up their power acquisition by spreading the rate to all of their customers, even ECP customers. (This is not a committee actionable item, but important to know that CPCNH is working to fight against the cost shift to Epping customers and other towns with CPCNH)

With the news of NHEC having lower rates for Epping residents Michael asks if the committee should notify West Epping residents served by NHEC that they can save by switching from ECP to NHEC for their power supply.

The committee debates briefly with unanimous support for informing the town residents and discussion on how to best inform the impacted residents.

It is decided that Justin will write a press release to be sent out no later than Friday. Discussion is had on where to post the press release with no central news source for the town. The decision is made to put it on the unofficial town Facebook pages, the ECP website, as well as the town website.

John will take over website posting duties and will work with Jake Rogers to learn the system.

It is also discussed that we can reach out to NHEC to see if they can notify Epping residents impacted by the rate changes.

Justin brings forth opportunities from CPCNH that the town could take advantage of. He states that the ECP excess reserve fund option of charging fractions of a cent to each ECP customer could be used to help fund energy projects in town. He also notes that with the upcoming tax reassessment and town meeting with many tax impacting warrant articles that it is not a good idea to implement this option, particularly as there is no end goal at this time.

Michael brings forth that the committee should discuss potential projects to help the town save money related to energy and discuss at that time if a reserve fund would help with the endeavor.

Justin then brings up the CPCNH benefit of renewable energy credits (REC’s) for all town net metered customers. The current state aggregators have a net benefit of $27/REC. By switching to CPCNH as the REC aggregator the customer can have a net benefit of $35/REC. Michael asks if the customer has to be an ECP customer, and Justin answered they do not, anyone can utilize this in NH.

Justin was tasked with writing a press release on this benefit.

Michael also brings up the CPCNH learning center where interested residents can learn about energy. John will post a link on the ECP website.

Michael notes that RSA 53E outlines the next steps for energy aggregation committees. As it has been almost two years since going over this RSA Michael is going to look again and determine what responsibilities the ECP has to the town to ensure we are meeting those responsibilities.

Michael notes that CPCNH is looking for volunteers on various committees and encourages the members of ECP to explore this possibility.

The next meeting is set for 3/25/2025 at 7pm. The focus will be on long range planning.

Motion to adjourn the meeting is made by Justin and seconded by John.

Meeting is adjourned.