Town of Troy Board of Selectmen Information Session Cheshire Community Power August 28, 2024

get it shared out all right we are live on this View sit okay thank you I don't bite Hees oh that's all right actually actually actually we voted two years ago to restripe it and make that parking cuz nothing's moved out of that door except our 100y old fire truck one time and it was out yeah two years ago however we haven't been able to manage it striping done so we would actually have three more spaces and the handicap space would then be by the door figure change comes slowly to BR D sorry have more parking they open oh yeah you got which we actually it's gared well no go back oh yeah cuz we do a joint instead of doing the county we do a joint deot you guys can come in here you'll hear better in here there's two chairs here true these meetings are like church everybody wants to sit in the back stay away from the lightnings all right so there's signning sheet going around somewhere right y all right perfect I'll go ahead and call this public information session to order are we online yes we are online and streaming already and we are ready to go we talking y up all right right uh good afternoon uh I'm Terry Clark County Commissioner uh the reason we're here tonight is to uh talk to the citizens of of about Community power uh later this spring the board of Selectmen under RSA uh voted to uh subscribe uh the rate Mayers of Troy uh under uh chesher Community power which is uh a member of uh the community power Coalition New Hampshire this is Brian colan he's the uh CEO of CB cnh um everyone in town should have gotten a letter explaining uh that the town is going to chesher community power and what that means and what we're here today uh is to answer any questions you have as to uh what your options are um they're very simple uh number one if if you uh currently get uh uh your your default power from eversource you're automatically signed up for chosa Community power and uh rather than um beginning beginning on October 1st uh rather than paying uh 10.97 and6 cents oh excuse me 10.43 cents uh per kilowatt hour you'll be paying 8.9 um we have in in this handout that I passed out uh there's a chart that shows the options that we have uh you can uh do Granite basic which is theow rate uh you can do granted plus which is 33% renewable 50% renewable or 100% renewable uh if you were to uh just do community basic which is our default then you don't have to do anything um if you want to make any of these other choices then there's a website with a phone number and an email address that you can go to and uh with your bill in front of you um either fill out the forms or or call them up and uh give them your customer number and explain to them what you'd like to do okay I'm going to turn this over to Brian now uh to uh answer any questions that anybody might have about uh the program thanks Terry and thanks for having me down here tonight um looks like folks brought who got a letter most folks got a letter hopefully everyone got a um if you didn't it should be coming um we have a presentation that we can go through um but we can also just start with questions that folks might have and go from there and then if we don't get to the things that are inside the presentation we'll open up to that page I have a question yeah so just right off the top here we we have a menu of the default is community basic 8.9% 9 cents per kilowatt hour great I understand that can you give us an idea of what the relative or what what the give us some idea of what these different things are proposed of I mean I suppose I think I know what 100% renewable is what's Granite basic for a buck less a month is that like a Coal Fired plant running on toxic waste some place or no I can walk through that or Terry you can you can also probably should have mentioned that uh last month or month and a half ago uh because because the town uh uh joined treasure Community power the town gets it uh a representative on uh the the treasure Community power governance committee and uh the government's committee met it's made up of uh uh nine members um and decided to add a onethird of a scent to our basic rate uh as an Adder so that we could start uh accumulating U uh money that we could uh later use for Community projects you know you could your street lights you could solarize them put some insulation in the building Etc like that um based on that 30% uh Troy will be it's estimated but in January uh you will $16,700 uh for that fund to use for any of those kind of projects and that we we decided to do that Adder because it's sort of another benefit of community power uh it it not only gives you lower rates but it gives you an opportunity to put some money aside and um go for some of these some of these projects that will save you money uh in the long run so if I go with Grant basic that third of the sent is not there right and then if I go with the 100% renewable that third is not there no it's not so it's only if I take the second to cheapest one we get the benefit of yes where does that money get stored and who um is responsible for so we keep track of all we we is a community power Coalition in New Hampshire you're not ever it's not ever it's not ever SCE that's Community power Coalition in New Hampshire um when you pay your bill um that money goes into eversource eversource then sends that money from what it is for us on the supply side this 8.9 C they then send that to us we account for it and whatever the discretionary Adder that that Terry just described is that third of the scent we keep track of that in our accounting in our books that and that could be sent to um every quarter it's up to Terry it's up to it's up to not Terry the community as to when that gets sent over yeah I was going to ask do you do an annual report or by anual or for us to know how much is in there and kind of so we can as a town for the select and keep track of it so in January we'll meet uh December or January we'll meet again committee will meet again the member towns representatives of all member towns will meet again uh we get that we'll have that data from CPC and and then we'll be you know we'll be looking towards the future we'll have a little more information about what the future rates might be and and that sort of thing and then uh decide what to do whether we continue with that uh uh take it away or or or what you know we'll decide that in January yeah and on a monthly basis we provide to all members of cpcn um a community benefit report so you're able to really track what has been the benefit that's been going into the community um and on that line there's there's going to be there's a column that says discretionary Adder um so that will be in there and you'll be able to see that accumulate on a monthly basis um as of now it's under cheser Community power um we could you know if we push for it maybe we try to break that out by the individual towns underneath I'm already pushing he's already pushing I'm surpris it's not on your Des but it's um every month if you wanted to get the value you were able to get that that value and I do have one other question um on other programs like this for individuals you're locked in for like a 2year contract or an agreement and if prices if ever source's prices drop below yours you're stuck where you are until you're now what if ever Source drops below 8% which probably won't happen but it does would we drop also do we match how so of the last four rate adjustments we make a rate adjustment every February and every August the last four times we've always been lower than ever Source not by a lot once we were only a little bit lower but every time we have been lower um and we've also been lower than Liberty and we've also been lower thano the last three times we've also been lower than Hampshire Electric quity so we will be competitive regardless of what ever source's rate is but if eversource for some reason had a great rate and we weren't able to match that or get below it you can go ahead and anybody in count can without any charge just walk out and go straight and if you opt out you will go straight back to eversource you don't have to choose eversource you just opt out of our um of Chester Community power at the same time you could if you get a really good Mailer in the mail that says say I've got this great deal for you for the next 2 years you can sign up with that supplier and opt out of gesture Community power at the same time there's no penalty Associated so you're free to move in and out so if you wanted to come back there's no penalty associate with that obviously there's a chair right there um I find a lot of this information is confusing oh okay and I'm looking at my a source Bill my supplier is um think out of Conneticut uhhuh and I'm perfectly content so what should I do you um so you should have been identified as a an individual that has a competitive supplier which means you would not be enrolled directly into Chester um nothing 100% so 99% % of the time that works sometimes we aren't ident we do not get the information that you're on a competitive supplier I haven't heard of that happening I have heard that happening on a net metering customer we can talk about net metering also um but long story short you shouldn't have to do anything if you're concerned about it you can call that number on that letter that we sent you 1866 power um it's 800866 power I think is what it is what that would be our call center and you'd say and please look up my account am I have I been flagged as a competitive supplier customer which means am I going to be enrolled and they'll be able to tell you that right away but if I understand you correctly there's essentially nothing I have to do there's essentially if if the system's working perfectly which 99% of the time it does you have to do nothing okay good thank you um when you look at your rate is on there I can look at that for you if you want to see how that rate compares to what we're offering Cher we can take a look at it too um and we could tell you whether you'd be saving if you went to chest power or not for anybody else that's on a competitive supplier um because there's usually quite a few folks that are on competitive suppliers especially if you remember back 6 months ago when the rates went through the roof everyone remember when those rates went up pretty high um there were some opportunities to go to comptitive supplier save some money not in every case but in some cases if you were to no longer be on that and you want to opt out of that competitive supplier's contract sometimes there's penalties in doing that so I would recommend that you call the supplier first before you walked in to community power just to check to make sure that there's not a p system so that number is what you call if you have a different supp for any questions if for any questions really but if you want to double check and say am I have I been identified as a supplier and I want to stay on it that's a good number to call get out of oh you want to get out of that if you wanted to get out of that contract I would double check your materials to make sure you're not going to get some kind of penalty associated with it with remove not finishing out your contract but if that's the case you can simply opt in and you will be put on on the next meter after Troy actually that would happen right away because Chester commity power is already part for that you if you want to get out of your contract you need to call what service that you're using now find out if you have a contract find out if there's a penalty it's on your bill he got yeah we can take a I I'll stay later and take a look at that did we answer your question about answer my question clean 100 Clean 50 Grand any other questions about Community power and what it means is uh chure Community power regulated by the state um the rates are done are regulated basically by us so by the by the members of U Community power coalition they do not have to be blessed by the state so when you look at eversource and you look at Liberty and youing Unitil they are I put quotes in it regulated by the state when it comes to setting up their rates we do not have to get State approval of that we do have to get board approval of that which is a 20 person board made up of communities just like you that's say whether or not we want to move forward with this rate and I spent a lot of time on that end to try to get those the what about one thing I I do want to make sure it's clear this this is a transfer for a new default service provider for a supplier energy supplier the poles and wires out there are still the responsibility of eversource and you're still an eversource customer you're paying the distribution Bill the distribution cost in order to keep those PS and wires up in the air and flowing as much as possible to your to your residents and your businesses so if there's an outage or if there's a pole that gets hit sometimes the pole gets hit and takes out something or a wire comes down um your call is to eversource to make sure they're aware of that so they can get that fixed we won't be able to do anything for you other than say please call eversource um to get that taken care of um but you're still an eversource customer it's about roughly roughly half the bill is is a distribution side of the business the supply side is roughly the other we could highlight the bill piece which um we I can actually does everyone have this presentation it does look like folks have it does anyone not have one so in in this presentation I want to look at page four this to give you an idea of what the bill might look like when you get it now Troy will start to get enrolled in October so that means when your meter gets red in October you'll start to see these new lower cost Supply LS you won't actually see it on your bill till November depending on when you actually get your bill your meter if your meter wasn't read until October 30th it might even take until December day you see till you see B but um everything works we have we've had very little hiccups on enrolling so that should go through relatively smoothly once you get your bill there's two sections on the eversource pill you'll see total charges for electricity the the kind of the blue line below that you'll see a yellow area that we've highlighted and the supplier will say Chester Community power or something very similar to that and then you'll see the rate that you're on if you look at the rate this one's saying 12.3 cents um that's now going to stay instead 8.9 I believe 8.9 um and then you'll have the supply portion that's the portion that will go back to CPC and to pay for the supply that actually we purchased on Troy's behalf the bottom piece the delivery piece you'll see a lot of different line items there those are all the values that support the meter costs for people putting into your at your home um the the PS the wires the Energy Efficiency charge all of those are down here at the bottom and that's again about 50% or so of the bill um but the total bill is what's still due so you still have to pay the full the full amount to every any questions about how the bill is going to change it's relatively minor it'll really just be a different number and you'll see a different name on there there should be a section I actually don't see it on here Terry there should be a little section for for questions about your supply somewhere in your bill um there should be our phone number in this example I don't see it this is not on the presentation it's not on the presentation but might borrow somebody's Bill and show you where it would show up um we did talk through the different options that are available for you community basic is what you'll be enrolled in if you do nothing and that's the 8.9 cents that Terry talked about you could you could opt down to a lower cost product if you want which is the 8.6 cents or you could opt up to a higher renewable content product the highest one we offer is 100% renewable content um some of our communities are actually doing opt Up Programs trying to get members to to get more Renewable Power into the system there's an option for you to do that by going to clean 100 and you can do that by going to the website or you can do that by going and calling the phone number I want to talk about the exceptions and we've covered most of these now I'm on slide 10 it says customers ineligible for automatic enrollment who here is a net meter customer or who's who's someone that has a solar panels that they use on their own okay so net meter customers should be identified by ever source and we should not enroll you the difference for net meter customers is that they rely on credits from exporting into the system and right now eversource can't share with us how much power has actually been delivered into the system why not there systems figured out that's it computer systems Building Systems now are these the credits that they talk about that the typical person solar panels does suppli for because there's a large Bank of those well there's two there me get a us do you know when your system was put in place ours was put in a year ago so we I had to opt out yeah there's a couple different things so some when folks that net metered years ago yeah they have something called A Bank of kilowatt hours that they prod so you might be thinking about that and there's probably some people that have that they don't actually turn those kilow hours into money they are able to take those kilowatt hours and use them to net against their overall production over an entire year yeah the conser the consumer the person that put those there's another thing too it was this this has come before the legislature several times myef and they argue about these credits that uh like he would get because he generates power you have to fill out paperwork to get the benefit of those and you know yeah so he is talking about R energy credits yeah yeah that's I get a check because some other entity will buy those credits right they buy them through a broker that I sell you do but apparently the majority people in the state don't do that don't do it y maybe they don't know about it no well whatever notice you got they got people just they're ENT about it and as a consequence then what happens is after a certain period of time eversource sells so there's just big well it's it's a little bit different than that okay we end up we end up getting a little bit of a benefit from that so because you get a benefit of them not those customers that have not we'll say monetized their renewable energy by claiming it creating a renewable energy the state knows about those yes um and what they'll do is they'll they'll say hey we know that all of you suppliers which includes us are required by the renewable portfolio standard to buy a certain amount of those reps that are being cre you have to buy a certain amount of but there's a whole bunch of people in the state that decided not to actually create them so we're going to give you credit as if they had so they'll tell us that you know what for that class two requirement you don't have to buy as many as you thought you did because he didn't turn your neighbor did the neighbor didn't turn in the paperwork and try to do it so yeah every supplier in the state including ever Source including us any competitive supplier too yeah um we'll get a slight reduction in the amount of of um Class 2 solar well this has been a big this has been a big U there there there is a significant membership of the legislature did not by party that has opposed improving the credit system and the thing that keeps coming up is these wrecks uh and because I don't know I I I personally hav't I've Ved to go ahead and do you know expand this stuff but uh there's a there's a lot of pressure from the industry to leave things the way they are because the re work average that's that's the most sense I can make out of yeah I mean they are working to change the um the Public Utilities Commission right now has been tked to look at the net metering program yes and suggest changes if they need changes need to be made they've been asked by the legislature to look at a few different things um so it's possible that metering could change in the future for the most part as you put it um they allow grandfather so those folks that have invested on some in something with one set of rules worse than it is but there's been there's been a desire to improve it on some of our parts and then but there's I would I would describe it as a power generating industry desire to not to not change anything which why there's restrictions on the so you know if you go to Massachusetts you see a lot of Sol stuff you go over you see like everything's cover soar and in New Hampshire you can't do that because they don't want the bad guys my op so when it comes to community power though and you're n metering I mean I think you did the right thing by by opting out you could have called the number or you just decided to opt out that's that works too on the website I should have mentioned that um but you shouldn't have been automatically enrolled any but that's that you kind of double you should and then I have a followup question on that though is put people can buy sh is kind of like owning your own system but it's not your system and I'm curious if somebody in Troy say to buy in that um have a similar scenario how how that work would you be buying so if I if I said well I want 100% renewable you're buying your power someplace so would you be buying power from the Sol Jaffrey it's possible um we will We the way that is set up is we purchase renewable energy certificates from New Hampshire facilities or New Hampshire qualified facilities and it could be we could get it directly from the Jaffrey project because they will also be selling those renewable energy certificates or you can off it's if it's now it's interesting you use the phrase New Hampshire qualify which leads me to believe is my understanding you the power can come from a place and however the magic of the GD is uh you know you're you're taking the certificate for uh renewable energy could be generated in Wisconsin or and that is how that works is that well Wisconsin is a bit of a stretch it would be definitely be in for needs to be new Y for the most part we prioritize the Hampshire generation if we can get well there's real limits on what's generated and you can't always get it so some right sometimes you have to pay something called the alternative compliance price which we had to pay a little bit of that this year for a particular class but um the Jaffrey project I would need to learn a little bit more on exactly how they're pulling together their Community solar program um but it would be separate from what you're talking about here from what I can tell so my question would be you know for me with Sol I would have to stick with get cred I just but if I was a jaff if I was a Troy resident and I I bought into this Jaffrey project and I I got most of my electricity there but I want place would I still have to keep eversource as my supplier could you be my supplier so I'm not sure about that because that's there are things of service territories so you right now Troy itself is part of community power Coalition so I'm not sure how we would get the benefits from the Jaffrey project onto that individual customers bill that's great into it but if we learned more about how the Jaffrey Community power is planning on doing that um there's could be a possibility yeah so I got now I got another billly question so on many of our houses in this area sometime in the 70s The Meters were dou by it's very common in the more rural parts of cheser County to see a single family house with 2 meters on it and that's because in the mid early '70s they said well you know domestic consumption you your Electrify your TV that's this meter and then you have electric out water heater and you have electric heat yes and that's because electric heat was going to all be generated by ver Yankee and it was just going to be was going to be free except for the cost of the pilling so a lot of our houses have 2 meters on so going back to his question he generates solar power on the ray in his yard he net meters that through one of those meters can he SL just make them should be the answer the other way can sign up on on your you should be able to because on when if someone has 2 meters and they've kept that format then you'll have two you'll often have two rates because that'll look like two meter numbers the electric heat rate was often a number a different number than what the usage rate was so you could sign up the Nonet meter rate to this you know if you have me or I know yeah but they did ask that question when they inst it you have have a separate water probably thaton make sure they pull everything that one yeah I would the this have me perit that's um so as far as folks that won't beut atically enrolled it's competitive suppliers those that have suppliers and those that are net meter um that's really oh let's talk a little bit more about that meter on um we are doing everything we can to serve net meter customers we just aren't able to do it yet once we're able to do that we will let chesher County know that we can now do that so you can then make a choice do you want to stick with ever Source or do you want to move over and there's no there's no penalty from ever source so F question about the two meters if we sign up which rate are we going to get we're seeing two different rates right now um the rate that you would you'd want to compare so if this electric hot water rate is a a special Legacy rate that every sort still has I'm not aware of one but if they still have it and you're able to get it um you want to look they're build at the same rate now they should be so when we sign up we get them both in the same rate well what I'm saying is I'm thinking what I'm thinking is if you're net metering right you can you have the opport you could conceivably net meter one side of your sure and do this on the other yeah but if we're not metering doesn't matter now and both in that case both accounts would be signed up automatically have to do anything you have me on that account they're both default service they did used to have lower rat it but I did no I don't I don't remember I don't remember seeing it now in their current no it's been it's been a decade or more has it okay yeah didn't miss like last um that's all I had so keep I can go we can go to the very end there's no number on that one unfortunately but it would be slide 12 key Point key points um on or after October 1st the supply will be switched over participation in community community power is voluntary um if you don't like it you can switch out no problem and or you can opt up to a different rate or you can move to a competitive supplier the option is your there's no penalty in moving around and if it was something that you really like doing every month you could do it back and forth every single month if you wanted but it is it is an OP down yes so if you don't do anything this is what you're going to get right if you don't do anything and and or your neighbors don't do anything they're going to be in community power as well um our lates our rates are lower though so your savings will start to accumulate starting October 1st or whenever your meter read is read after October first eversource will continue to deliver the electricity you are still a delivery customer of eversource key Point um customer shopping with third partyy suppliers will remain with their supplier which we've talked about that's competitive suppliers then Chester Community power is self-funded there's no taxes that are used to cover these programs all the money to cover these programs are in that 8.9 Cent rate everything's in there there's nothing else those are my key points um I don't really have much else to talk through and I'm willing to to uh actually that gentleman left didn't he um and we I can look at the bill your bill later if you want oh he did and they probably can straighten out all this op I help with that yeah I was hoping to look at the rate form because often times folks aren't aren't positive of what the actual rate is that they're paying 19.9 that's yeah yeah so yours is up yours is right up there so you'll have you'll have some savings if call your company um I would actually I would call Smart Energy and just verify that there's no penalty for stopping that way you can or or figure out if the penalty is more than the you know what your savings that's double their rate you you're compy would know I don't know what smart energies contract with you is so when you signed up you actually signed a contract with them I know most folks don't that's so so you might be past your contract limits and then you can just opt out for nothing well no you have to you have to find out because they have an automatic uh my my ex-wife went through this cuz she signed up with them and then when she wanted to she missed the if you if you don't hit them you have a like a five day window to say I'm not renewing and if you don't say I'm not renewing in that 5day window you're renewed again for another year and you opt out penalty so it might be she paid them the money I think it was $50 yeah um but I would give him a call there should [Music] be one one thing and I and certainly clarify this or back me up on one of the issues that I have often run into with people is you may you're going to have a lower rate on the cost of the electricity but the the fees to eversource for public service hampire the cost of the Sticks and Bricks is remaining the same so your whole bill is not going to go down by half right just the delivery side's going to go down by half sometimes people are disappointed we have some additional handouts if anybody wants to grab something the thank you great thank you thank you thank you the end of that meeting close the information session for thanks very much there's one what did that happen no no I mean just what you were saying and uh I worked in computer industry for a while quite a while and things you're saying about the credits and stuff everything's control with computers I age except well so if you want my opinion you're correct and that be the end of the conversation but there are because they literally are keeping those extra funds going they should be able to back it right out of their be a and and there many there are many of us who have said what's why is this so and the answer is because they want me they want hang on that's correct and there is no since in my brief time there there is no subject not abortion not uh not end of life stuff not school funding nothing has had more people digging in their heels and fighting against change than those credits and it's it's not it's not a republican issue and it's not a democratic issue because it's the orang sense for business correct and they are let me tell you they they are they know who they need and know it's amazing cuz when I first got there was like first Wast no no I agree with you but they say it all right thank you very much have a good night guys all right so I will entertain a motion to public 91 91 a 3 2 B all right Curtis yes dick yes