New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission

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Energy Choice:

Choosing an Energy Supplier

Wondering what all the ads for choosing an electric supplier are about? During the 1990s, the New Hampshire Legislature took steps to provide electric supply choices to electric customers. It took some time, however, for a competitive electric energy supply market to develop, with options for larger commercial and industrial consumers occurring sooner than those for smaller commercial and residential customers. Today, there are many companies, called competitive energy suppliers, registered to supply energy to your home or business. The Commission’s website lists all the competitive energy suppliers doing business in New Hampshire. A comparison of the products and prices offered by competitive energy suppliers is also available.

Your electric bill consists of two parts – delivery service and energy supply. Delivery service is the poles and wires that bring electricity to your home or business. Your electric utility (also known as the electric distribution company) delivers electricity to all customers within its defined service area. The energy supply portion of your bill is for the electricity you use in your home or business. Who supplies that energy is up to you, the customer. You may continue to buy your energy from your electric utility or you may choose to buy your energy from a competitive energy supplier.

If you decide to choose a competitive energy supplier, you will still be a customer of your electric utility for the delivery of electricity to your home or business. The utility will still be responsible for restoring power if there is an outage. What will be different is that you will now also be a customer of a competitive energy supplier for the actual electricity that you use in your home or business. You may receive one bill, sometimes called consolidated billing, from your electric utility for both the delivery and the energy. Or you may receive two bills – one from your electric utility for the delivery of the electricity and the other from the competitive energy supplier for the electricity you used. Everyone’s bill is different, but as a general rule of thumb, about half of the total bill is for delivery and the rest is for the electricity you use.

Remember, regardless of who you buy your electricity from, you will continue to call your electric utility for outages, emergency services and questions about your service.

If you have questions about choosing a competitive energy supplier, please contact the NH Public Utilities Commission at 1-800-852-3793 or at puc@puc.nh.gov.

Want to know more about competitive energy suppliers? The links below will help you decide whether choosing a supplier is right for you: