I Voted to Move Power Back to Eversource; I Still Believe Community Power Is Good

During January of 2026, I voted to move some of the City’s commercial accounts from Community Power back to Eversource (the default energy provider.) While my decision captures short-term savings for Dover, I made the choice reluctantly. I don’t feel great about it.

New Hampshire’s Energy Supply Is a Collective Action Problem

To understand why this choice was difficult, let’s talk about collective action problems.

A collective action problem occurs when a group of people (or cities) would all be better off if they acted together toward a common goal, but individual incentives pull them in different directions. If everyone looks out only for their short-term individual interests, the “collective” benefit — in this case, lower energy pricing and market competition — cannot be achieved, leaving everyone worse off in the long run.

Collective action problems are everywhere. The environment is one. It’s in our shared interest to reduce carbon emissions, but it’s often in an individual’s interest to skip a given investment in the moment. An energy-efficient upgrade is more expensive than the less-efficient thing it would replace that works “fine” right now. Capital investments in these problems are rarely cost-effective in the near term, and it’s difficult to measure the cost of not-doing something until it is too late.

By moving accounts back to the default provider to save money now, we risk weakening the very entity designed to introduce competition into the utility market. It’s a tug-of-war between a better budget today and a healthier market tomorrow. Put another way, it’s a tug-of-war between our current and future financial incentives; spend more money up front to spend less money later.

The Power of Communities

When we talk about “Community Power,” we aren’t just talking about the electricity running through the wires. We are talking about the power of communities to advocate for ourselves.

Community Power represents collective buying power. By grouping dozens of municipalities together, it can buy energy in high volumes that no single city could manage on its own. This volume creates leverage, allowing us to negotiate better rates and more innovative contracts. When we move accounts away from this coalition, we aren’t just changing a provider; we are diminishing that collective leverage.

Currently, Community Power’s rates are higher than Eversource’s. There are several reasons for this, but the bottom line is that the organization is “righting the ship” by building the cash reserves it needs to unlock future buying flexibility. I’m not prepared to pull the plug on that just yet — yes, the pun is bad — because the future benefit opportunity for the entirety of New Hampshire energy users is too big.

If you have a 401k, you know how this goes. When the market dips, you don’t pull all your money out, because doing so makes your losses permanent. You’d miss the gains when the market bounces back.

You might take the contrarian argument and argue that it’s not smart to try to “win big” on the next hand of poker after losing your money on the first. Fair point. To that, I can only say: in gambling, the house wins by design. Businesses, however, win by taking strategic risks to exploit market opportunities. As long as New Hampshire municipalities don’t jump ship from the collective effort, Dover’s risk is grounded in pragmatism.

Monopolies vs. The Open Market

I believe in the free market. Competition creates downward pressure on prices and spurs innovation. Monopolies do the opposite. As market consolidation increases, so does the risk of consumer harm through overcharges, loss of quality, and stagnation.

• Eversource is a regional monopoly that, as of early 2026, employs ten registered lobbyists in New Hampshire.
• Community Power is a nonprofit governed by municipalities. Its goal is to provide rate competition and advocate for legislation that puts consumers first.

Advocacy as a Taxpayer Deliverable

In a monopolized market, advocacy is a financial product. Without an entity that has the legal standing and technical expertise to challenge utility filings, taxpayers are left defenseless against cost-shifting.

We saw the value of this deliverable recently when Eversource attempted to recover a $4 million loss caused by its own technical billing error. It tried to label the loss a “non-bypassable” delivery charge; essentially forcing every household in the state to bail it out, even those households that are not its customers.

The Community Power Coalition defended consumer interests and blocked this plan. This was a direct intervention that saved New Hampshire residents from paying for a massive corporation’s internal mistake. That is the “advocacy dividend” — a tangible saving that doesn’t always show up on a monthly rate comparison but significantly impacts the long-term cost of living.

Data as a Tool for Innovation

Innovation is the primary casualty of a monopoly. Currently, if a competitive supplier wants to offer a “Time-of-Use” rate — where you pay less for running your dishwasher at night when demand is low — they can’t easily do it. Because Eversource controls the meter data, a competitor has to wait weeks or months to see when a customer actually used power. By then, the opportunity to offer a targeted, lower-priced plan is gone.

The monopoly doesn’t just own the wires; it owns the information that tells us how to use those wires more cheaply. By keeping data locked away, it ensures that no competitor can offer a more innovative or efficient product than its own “one-size-fits-all” default rate.

Modern energy innovation — like smart grids and real-time demand response — requires transparent data. There is currently a push in the legislature to dismantle the projects that would put this data back in the hands of the consumers who generate it.

Molly Rains, writing for New Hampshire Bulletin, “Bill Targeting Energy Data Project Moves Ahead”:

A cost-benefit analysis, filed in early January, concluded the project would most likely benefit New Hampshire’s utility customers in the short and long terms once it is implemented. If HB 723 becomes law, however, it’s not clear whether the platform will come to fruition.

With ten lobbyists for Eversource, three for Liberty Utilities, and two for Unitil — Community Power is a lead advocate for consumers. Without this data, we are stuck in an old, expensive way of doing things. With it, we can finally begin to innovate and drive costs down through smarter technology.

Looking Ahead

I take no satisfaction in moving these accounts. It is in the collective financial interest of New Hampshire for Community Power to succeed. This isn’t an anti-business stance; it’s a pro-market one. Eversource Energy is a publicly traded company with fiduciary obligations to its shareholders. Its interests, by design, will not always align with the public’s benefit. In any market, competition is the solution to that misalignment.

My vote was a move to capture immediate savings for our city’s budget, but my policy stance remains the same. We must continue to support a system that prioritizes consumer interests above monopoly interests, and innovation over the status quo. Balancing short-term gains against the long-term health of our energy market is a challenge.