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Electric Co-op Latest Utility To Announce Rate Increase

David DeHetre
/
Flickr CC

  Another utility has announced that electric rates will rise this winter. For customers of the New Hampshire Electric Coop, the state’s second largest utility, winter electricity bills will rise 12.2%

The rate increase takes place on October 1st, and will cost ratepayers using 500 kilowatt hours $12.47 cents more per month. The increase is due to increasing rates on the energy half of the electric bill, which are increasing from 8.97 cents per kilowatt hour, to 11.6 cents.

Electric Coop spokesman Seth Wheeler says the reason for the increase is the same everywhere you look. “The lack of pipeline capacity adequate to handle both the winter demand for power generation and also for heating, that’s causing the price of natural gas to sky-rocket every winter,” he explains.

The coop is the third New Hampshire utility to announce its winter prices. The state’s biggest utility, Public Service of New Hampshire expects to have only a slight increase, while Liberty Utilities expects bills to rise as much as fifty percent. Unitil isn’t expected to file its winter rate until October. 

Sam Evans-Brown has been working for New Hampshire Public Radio since 2010, when he began as a freelancer. He shifted gears in 2016 and began producing Outside/In, a podcast and radio show about “the natural world and how we use it.” His work has won him several awards, including two regional Edward R. Murrow awards, one national Murrow, and the Overseas Press Club of America's award for best environmental reporting in any medium. He studied Politics and Spanish at Bates College, and before reporting was variously employed as a Spanish teacher, farmer, bicycle mechanic, ski coach, research assistant, a wilderness trip leader and a technical supporter.
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