TITLE XXXIV
PUBLIC UTILITIES

CHAPTER 374-F
ELECTRIC UTILITY RESTRUCTURING

Section 374-F:2

    374-F:2 Definitions. –
In this chapter:
I. "Commission" means the public utilities commission.
I-a. "Default service" means electricity supply that is available to retail customers who are otherwise without an electricity supplier and are ineligible for transition service and is provided by electric distribution utilities under RSA 374-F:3, V or as an alterative, by municipal or county aggregators under RSA 53-E.
I-b. "Department" means the department of energy.
II. "Electricity suppliers" means suppliers of electricity generation services and includes actual electricity generators and brokers, aggregators, and pools that arrange for the supply of electricity generation to meet retail customer demand, which may be municipal or county entities.

[Paragraph II-a effective Sept. 13, 2026.]


II-a. "Advanced nuclear reactor" has the same meaning as that provided in 42 U.S.C. section 16271(b)(1), as amended from time to time.
III. "FERC" means the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
IV. "Stranded costs" means costs, liabilities, and investments, such as uneconomic assets, that electric utilities would reasonably expect to recover if the existing regulatory structure with retail rates for the bundled provision of electric service continued and that will not be recovered as a result of restructured industry regulation that allows retail choice of electricity suppliers, unless a specific mechanism for such cost recovery is provided. Stranded costs may only include costs of:
(a) Existing commitments or obligations incurred prior to the effective date of this chapter;
(b) Renegotiated commitments approved by the commission;
(c) New mandated commitments approved by the commission, including any specific expenditures authorized for stranded cost recovery pursuant to any commission-approved plan to implement electric utility restructuring in the territory previously serviced by Connecticut Valley Electric Company, Inc.;
(d) Costs approved for recovery by the commission in connection with the divestiture or retirement of Public Service Company of New Hampshire generation assets pursuant to RSA 369-B:3-a; and
(e) All costs incurred as a result of fulfilling employee protection obligations pursuant to RSA 369-B:3-b.
V. "Transition service" means electricity supply that is available to existing retail customers prior to each customer's first choice of a competitive electricity supplier and to others, as deemed appropriate by the commission.
VI. "Demand response" means a reduction in the use of electricity by retail electricity energy customers in response to power grid needs, economic signals from their electricity supplier based on wholesale market prices, or time varying rates.
VII. "Distributed energy resources" or "DER" means demand response, distributed generation, and distributed storage.
VIII. "Distributed generation" or "DG" means a customer-generator as defined in RSA 362-A:1-a, II-b or a limited producer as defined in RSA 362-A:1-a, III, excluding qualifying storage systems and grid-interactive electric vehicles.
IX. "Distributed storage" or "DS" means qualifying storage systems as defined in RSA 362-A:1-a, IX-a, grid-integrated electric vehicles when they are interconnected to a New Hampshire jurisdictional distribution grid behind a retail electric meter, or energy storage as defined in RSA 374-H:1, III, that are not participating in any wholesale energy markets administered by ISO New England as a registered asset or otherwise.
X. "Grid-integrated electric vehicle" or "GIEV" means a battery-run motor vehicle that has the ability for 2-way power flow between the vehicle and the electric grid and the communications hardware and software that allow for the external control of battery charging and discharging by the electric utility customer, an electric distribution company, an electricity supplier, or an aggregator.
XI. "Grid modernization" means improvements to electric distribution or transmission infrastructure, including related data analytics equipment, that are designed to accommodate or facilitate the integration of renewable electric generation resources with the electric distribution grid or to otherwise enhance electric distribution or transmission grid reliability, grid security, demand response capability, customer service or energy efficiency, or conservation and includes:
(1) Advanced metering infrastructure that facilitates metering and providing related price signals to users to incentivize shifting demand and support transactive energy;
(2) Intelligent grid devices for real time system and asset information at key substations and customer locations;
(3) Automated control systems for electric distribution circuits and substations;
(4) Communications networks for service meters;
(5) Energy storage systems and microgrids that support circuit-level grid stability, power quality, reliability or resiliency or provide temporary backup energy supply;
(6) Electrical facilities and infrastructure necessary to support electric vehicle charging systems;
(7) Interconnection standards and procedures for state jurisdictional DG and DS connection to the distribution grid consistent with New Hampshire's energy policy in RSA 378:37 that reasonably balances reliability and safety risks with costs and benefits; and
(8) Other new technologies that may be developed regarding the electric grid.
XII. "Transactive energy" or "TE" means a system of economic and control mechanisms that allows the dynamic balance of supply and demand across the entire electrical infrastructure using value as a key operational parameter.

Source. 1996, 129:2. 1998, 191:3, 4. 2003, 56:2, eff. July 20, 2003. 2014, 310:4, eff. Sept. 30, 2014. 2019, 316:17, eff. Oct. 1, 2019. 2021, 91:280, eff. July 1, 2021. 2023, 243:3, eff. Oct. 7, 2023. 2026, 332:7, eff. Sept. 13, 2026.