The ‘Wild West’ of hooking up large solar projects in New Hampshire

In New Hampshire, utility companies essentially write their own rules for the process to hook up, or interconnect, solar projects larger than 1 megawatt. (Getty Images)

Nearly two years ago, a Goshen couple signed a contract to allow an energy company to build a solar farm on their mountainside property. But the project has faced continuous delays – stalling, too, the life plans the family made around it.

Kearsarge Energy approached the couple, Kathryn and Peter Hanson, about the project in the summer of 2022, Kathryn Hanson said. It would span between 23 and 25 acres and take about two years to complete.

The expectation of extra income on the way meant Peter Hanson could start planning his retirement, his wife said. But that timeline has been pushed by what has been a 21-month-and-counting wait to get Eversource to complete an interconnection study, a step the utility company takes to see how large energy projects would affect the rest of the electrical grid.

In August, it will be two years since the Hansons signed the contract, but there’s little indication of when the project will finally materialize.

“Without that OK, nothing can move forward,” Kathryn Hanson said.

In New Hampshire, utility companies essentially write their own rules for the process to hook up, or interconnect, solar projects larger than 1 megawatt – about enough energy to power 173 homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association – to the grid. Developers say this has resulted in lengthy, unpredictable delays.

“It’s a little bit the Wild West,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire, “and they (the utilities) have no deadlines. There’s nothing really enforceable, and they just get to sort of run roughshod over developers.”

Kearsarge Energy is one of three companies – including ReWild Renewables and Lodestar Energy – that filed a complaint against Eversource with the Department of Energy in March, alleging the interconnection delays violate state law, have cost the developers and landowners money, and prevented municipalities from accessing energy savings. The companies pointed to 28 projects stuck in the queue, unable to connect to the grid.

Eversource rejected these claims , arguing that the company has often gone “above and beyond any legal or regulatory requirements by conducting proactive outreach” to expedite the projects. It also said the companies played a role in the projects’ delays, pointing, for instance, to six projects that changed in size, sometimes multiple times.

One of those projects that changed in size was the Goshen solar farm, said William Hinkle, the media relations manager for Eversource, which means the project essentially had to start all over again in the queue. He also said it required a study by ISO New England, the region’s grid operator.

Legislative involvement

The interconnection process for large solar projects might soon be dictated by the state instead of the utilities. Legislation heading to the governor’s desk, Senate Bill 391 , would push the Department of Energy to “set cost effective, timely, and predictable processes for customer generators wishing to interconnect to the state’s electric grid.”

It would require that, within 60 days of the bill’s passage, the department open a proceeding to examine and draft regulations to set “uniform procedures” for interconnection to utilities’ infrastructure.

If Gov. Chris Sununu signs the bill, the department would have 15 months to submit the draft regulations to the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, a body that provides legislative oversight to the regulatory process.

Clean Energy New Hampshire supports SB 391. Hinkle said Eversource doesn’t have any concerns “with the final bill as amended.”

The lack of regulation for larger solar projects in New Hampshire has compounded with an exploding interest in clean energy development in recent years, driven by less-expensive technology, federal tax credits, and high electricity prices, Evans-Brown said.

Five years ago, Eversource, the state’s largest utility, received about 20 interconnection applications a week, Hinkle said. In 2022 and 2023, that number climbed to 200 a week and, now, sits at around 100.

Ninety-five percent of those projects – typically residential ones under 100 kilowatts – are approved for interconnection by Eversource within a matter of days, Hinkle said. Larger projects – those between 500 kilowatts and 1 megawatt – may take 60 to 90 days for approval, he said.

The largest projects – those over 1 megawatt – often take much longer. Part of the reason, Hinkle said, is because they may trigger a review by ISO New England. He also said moving projects through the queue in a timely manner is a “shared responsibility” between Eversource and developers and that delays from one developer may affect others farther down the waitlist.

Interconnection studies take about 60 days for Eversource to complete, Hinkle said, but “there’s really not necessarily a typical time” a project might wait on the queue. Developers and property owners said this wait often spans many months.

A frustrating journey

Howie Wemyss, a partial owner of the Glen House Hotel at the base of Mount Washington in Gorham, said the interconnection process was much longer – and more frustrating – than he had first expected. This project was in the range of about 300 kilowatts, he said, which means it wasn’t among the largest class of projects.

The hotel set out to be as sustainable as possible when it opened in 2018. They had geothermal heating and cooling and a small hydroelectric station. Solar power was the next piece to minimize or eliminate the need for electricity off the grid, Wemyss said.

So the hotel hired a contractor and submitted an application to Eversource in May 2023 to interconnect a solar array. Wemyss thought they could get approved in time to reap the energy benefits of the summer months.

That hope soon evaporated.

“Months went by, and nothing,” Wemyss said. “And we would email or call them and nobody seemed to know anything, and it was very frustrating because we thought we were going to build the array in 2023.”

He started calling some elected officials in hopes it would help move the process along. Coincidentally or not, he said, it did – but the project appeared at the end of Eversource’s long list, despite the application having been submitted months earlier.

Some prodding later, the hotel moved to the front of the waitlist. This May, it got the results of the interconnection study, learning it would have to pay much less than expected, Wemyss said.

Hinkle, the Eversource spokesman, said this project was fast-tracked and moved up in the queue by months in an effort to more quickly approve medium-sized projects.

The project should break ground in early July and be up and running in the fall, but the disappointment and the impact remain.

“It was so frustrating,” Wemyss said. “We lost an entire year of production because of that and, of course, everything gets a little more expensive as you go.”

For some developers, the unpredictability of New Hampshire’s interconnection process makes it a less attractive place to invest.

Kate Tohme, the director of interconnection policy at the renewable energy company New Leaf Energy, told a House committee in March that “a clear set of interconnection standards” is one of the key factors the company considers before investing in the state.

Tohme said in written testimony that the company is “extremely limited” in moving its three projects in the interconnection queue forward “due to lack of access to information and regulatory certainty of timelines and costs.” (She did not specify the utility company with which New Leaf was trying to interconnect.)

And without clear guidelines in New Hampshire, she said, the company “is forced to focus our attention and resources in other states.”

The post The ‘Wild West’ of hooking up large solar projects in New Hampshire appeared first on New Hampshire Bulletin .