Liberty utility customers slammed with monthslong billing backlog, high rates

By FRANCES MIZE

Valley News Staff Writer

Published: 03-06-2023 5:15 PM

CANAAN — On top of historically high electric rates, customers of Liberty utilities have also been grappling with a billing fiasco that began last fall and is only now close to being resolved.

Canaan resident Jessica Bishop received two months’ worth of Liberty utility bills at once right around Christmas. It threw a wrench in her financial planning for the season.

“I had spent four or five hours between October and November calling, being transferred, being hung up on. When I tried to mail a check, they returned it — said they didn’t recognize my account,” said Bishop, who owns a home cleaning company. “We understand (rates) have gone up, but to go more than double and not really feel that there is any accuracy behind the bill or even anyone that cares to help is very frustrating.”

Bishop is one of scores of Liberty ratepayers who have gone months without receiving a consistent, itemized bill. Some bills from as far back as August only are making their way to customers this month.

The utility blames the delay on a catastrophic system failure that occurred when Liberty transitioned over to a new billing software in early October.

“With any type of migration of this nature, you’re going to experience some hiccups,” a Liberty representative said to the Valley News.

Liberty has said that the customers whose bills were delayed will not be subject to late fees, though the utility was not able to provide a number of accounts that had been affected by late billing.

Amanda Noonan, director of the Consumer Services Division of the New Hampshire Department of Energy customer service division, has a team of employees whose job it is to help customers resolve billing problems and other service-related issues with utilities.

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“Liberty is now pretty much on track,” Noonan said. “I think they have some accounts that are still in the process of being worked, a small number, less than 50. They anticipate having all of those issues corrected and the billing out to customers by mid-March.”

But smoothing out the billing issue doesn’t alleviate the stresses of historically high electric rates, which are expected to continue to be elevated amid market volatility and idiosyncrasies of New Hampshire deregulated energy sector.

Customers of Liberty and Eversource — the state’s largest electricity providers — saw electric rates doubled beginning last summer. Rate adjustments at the beginning of February yielded only a negligible decrease.

Staff at Twin Pines Housing Trust received four months’ worth of bills at once last week. The nonprofit’s Summer Park project — 42 units of senior housing across from Hanover High School — hadn’t received a bill since August.

Twin Pines’ Executive Director Andrew Winter acknowledged that converting to a new software system can be a challenge, but emphasized that receiving multiple bills all at once — despite little pressure to pay them off immediately — is frustrating.

In the short term, the delay in receiving the bills hampered the organization’s ability to make financial adjustments, he said.

“I think for anybody who’s budgeting for certain kinds of expenses, when you get a bill and it’s for thousands and thousands of dollars, as you might expect for a large building, it’s a little bit of a shock to the system,” Winter said. “The accuracy and timeliness of bills is one of the most basic business concepts. We encourage Liberty to do what it can to get its house in order.”

David Millstone, of Lebanon, is one of about 20 Liberty ratepayers associated with a Charlestown-based community solar project established by Norwich Solar Technologies. Until last week, the project hadn’t received a bill since September.

For electric customers with solar installations waiting for net-metered credit, delayed or opaque bills put another wrinkle in their planning. Solar credits are paid to solar generators — either individuals or investors in community arrays — based on how much power they’re generating that goes into the grid.

“So if in a given month my solar panels generate $10 worth of electricity that goes into the grid, Liberty credits my home bill with $10,” Millstone said.

Those with shares in community solar receive a proportional credit amount that should be applied to individual home electric bills.

But despite the bill from Liberty for the community solar array finally arriving, the utility still hasn’t finished its job.

“They used to itemize the bill and the credits, but on this bill it’s just a blanket statement,” said Suzanne Jones, office coordinator for Norwich Solar.

As a result, it’s unclear to Jones whether the credits have been transferred to the customers who are owed them. She’ll have to go through and do the math herself.

Liberty’s stumbles don’t bode well for the future, Millstone said, as pressure mounts on utilities to transition to greener energy alternatives.

“Several members of our group have said that it’s really hard to track everything now with so many months clumped together,” Millstone said. “I mean, I think Liberty has just done an abominable job.”

The difficulties indicate stark differences between Vermont and New Hampshire when it comes to transitioning to more renewable energy sources.

“The utilities in Vermont, particularly Green Mountain Power, were originally very strong proponents of solar, and people installing solar,” Jones said. “And so they worked hard to figure out how to handle that kind of billing. Liberty’s primary business outside of New Hampshire is gas and water. So they would never have had to deal with this particular problem of billing. Particularly community solar arrays, there’s not a lot of them in New Hampshire. And certainly very few in the Liberty area.”

Some worry that the bungled billing will discourage consumers from pursuing their own efforts to change their energy consumption patterns.

For example, Millstone and his wife own an electric car.

“If we were in Vermont, Green Mountain Power would have given us a cash rebate for buying an electric car, and the state of Vermont would have given us a tax credit,” Millstone said. “If we were in the area served by the New Hampshire Electric Co-op, we’d get some money back from them. With Liberty, forget about it.”

Bishop, who received the doubled up bill at Christmas time, said the experience with Liberty only heightened her interest in energy alternatives. But at this point, she feels priced out of them.

“I really wish I could afford solar, or had a bike that generated power,” Bishop said. “Then I’d have a smaller bill.”

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.

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