Gov. Chris Sununu has signed into law two bills aimed at encouraging the use of renewable energy in New Hampshire
The first, Senate Bill 262, was a compromise. Originally, it would have allowed businesses to increase net metering projects from one to five megawatts, a provision that Sununu has vetoed in the past. That didn’t make it into the final version, but it does contain two provisions will help solar developers. One requires the Department of Energy to come up with a program to standardize utility interconnect fees. This may seem a small thing, “but it has become a real issue New England-wide,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy NH. “Different utilities have different rates that could be two, three, five times as much. It has sunk projects. There is a fundamental fairness issue here.”
The other tweak in the bill allows projects owned by…