New Hampshire's energy consumption

Summary: New Hampshire’s total energy consumption and per capita consumption are among the lowest in the country. Severe winter weather makes the state particularly vulnerable to widespread and lengthy power outages.

A northern New England state bordering Canada, New Hampshire was the first sovereign state in the Americas and, due to the large Quebecois diaspora, has the largest per capita French population, half again as large as Louisiana’s. The weather observatory on the peak of Mount Washington, the tallest mountain in the northeastern United States, has long claimed to observe “the world’s worst weather,” and it and other mountains in the White Mountains range experience hurricane-force winds on average of more than 100 days a year. Much of the state experiences subzero temperatures in the winter, and summers have historically been mild, though since the 1990s a number of summers have seen record and near-record heat and humidity.

New Hampshire’s Seabrook nuclear power plant in Portsmouth was at one time the largest nuclear reactor in New England; construction was completed in 1986 and full operation began in 1990. A second unit was planned but never completed, due to financial trouble. Seabrook’s construction was viciously opposed, not only by antinuclear activists but also by Michael Dukakis, then-governor of neighboring Massachusetts, because of environmental concerns for his state. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union further invigorated the anti-Seabrook protests, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan brought renewed scrutiny to nuclear installations the world over, Seabrook included. As of 2024, the station generated 1,296 megawatts. The relicensing process, which extended its operating license from 2030 to 2050, was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2019.

New Hampshire’s electricity use is particularly low because of a lower demand for air conditioning and 40.1 percent of the state using fuel oil rather than electricity for winter heating (wood-burning stoves and fireplaces were also commonly used). The state has no fossil fuel reserves, and its net electricity generation is among the lowest in the country (41st, as of 2022). Seabrook provided more than half of the state’s electricity generation until 2003, when two natural gas power plants were added. In 2007, the state adopted a renewable energy portfolio standard, requiring 25 percent of the state’s electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2025, with much of that contributed by wind farms and home windmills. However, by 2024, renewable energy sources accounted for only 13.7 percent of the electricity consumed in the state. New Hampshire's first commercial wind energy facility went into operation in 2008: the Lempster Mountain Wind Power Project, a 24-megawatt farm near Mount Sunapee. In 2011, the Department of Energy awarded a $168.9 million loan guarantee to help subsidize the cost of constructing the $275 million Granite Reliable Power Windpark in the Phillips Brook area. The 99-megawatt wind farm launched in 2012 with the capability of powering as many as 25,000 homes. The Connecticut and Merrimack River basins could also offer considerable hydroelectric power, a resource that remains largely untapped.

Severe Weather and Power Outages

Three of New Hampshire’s most severe power outages occurred within the same four-year period. In December 2008, the worst ice storm in decades struck New Hampshire, parts of New England, and upstate New York. (In an ice storm, freezing rain strikes surfaces of freezing or below-freezing temperatures and turns to ice, accumulating in a growing layer.) During the December 2008 storm, ice quickly accumulated in masses, resulting in snapped tree limbs, downed power and telephone lines, collapsed rooftops, and fallen trees. At least 400,000 customers in New Hampshire, about a third of the population, was left without power—five times more than in the ice storm of 1998, previously the worst power outage and devastating storm on record. Many schools and colleges ended the semester early, and some schools were turned into emergency shelters for those without power, as the outage lasted for weeks in parts of the state. While the only death caused by the storm was the result of carbon monoxide poisoning when a gas-powered generator was used indoors, the financial toll was severe. Most of those who lost power were without it for days; telephone and cell phone services were either out or spotty; and despite contractors being hired from all over the country, full power restoration to the entire state took over a month.

Second only to the 2008 ice storm was the February 2010 wind storm, during which hurricane-force gusts of wind knocked down trees and power lines, resulting in 270,000 customers without power. It took over a week to restore power to the state.

Less than two years later, the 2011–12 winter weather began with a storm many assumed would signal the character of the season: the 2011 Halloween blizzard. Snowfall and freezing rain began in North Carolina the evening of October 28th and moved steadily north. New Hampshire received thirty-two inches of snow and 315,000 customers lost power—again significantly more than the 1998 ice storm, and only slightly below the 2008 figure. While the key element driving the damage in 2008 had been accumulating ice, in 2011 the problem was more simple: the blizzard came too early in the season, before the trees had lost their leaves. The significantly greater surface area of the leaves resulted in more snow accumulating before breaking limbs and downing power lines. Although the remainder of the winter proved to be mild, the financial toll of the October storm was again significant. Restoring power proved a slow process, despite the utility companies’ promises of improvements since 2008, and the federal funding made possible by the 2009 economic stimulus plan.

The occurrence of three widespread power outages affected more than half the state, with some customers experiencing a total of two months without power over a four-year period. The result was that the state’s two U.S. senators, Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen, called for a review of National Grid and PSNH, the state’s two electricity providers. Debate went back and forth between the utility companies and their critics as to whether there was an underlying problem with the electrical grid and the utility companies’ system for responding to outages, or whether these were simply three extreme weather events that exceeded the bounds of anything the utilities could be prepared for. A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study had estimated that the national cost of power interruptions was about $80 billion a year—though this may have been underestimated as some costs (e.g., nonessential home repairs, repairs to outbuildings, yard clean-ups) were deferred because of the economy and others (e.g., lost school days, the use of out-of-state contractors instead of in-state employees) are difficult to quantify.

Recurring problems during these outages were grid overload and customers being impacted by more than one outage event. Grid overload occurred when power was restored to a portion of the grid, causing a sudden flood of demand on that part of the grid, either because of appliances and lights that had been left on or because of a rush of customers powering up various items; this led to power re-failures. Restoration estimates were often inaccurate: a downed wire might be repaired, restoring power to a neighborhood, only to reveal that areas remained dark because of an additional problem. Because New Hampshire has so many rural areas, many of the lengthy repairs succeeded in restoring power to only a handful of homes, making restoration progress slow. Urban areas like Nashua and Manchester remained without power for over a week in some of these outages, lending support to the claim that there was a problem either with the grid itself or with restoration procedures.

Bibliography

Bourque, Ron. “Lessons from the Ice Storm.” New Hampshire Business Review (February 13, 2009).

Eisenstadter, Dave. The Weight of the Ice: The Northeast Ice Storm of 2008. Keene, NH: Surry Cottage Books, 2010.

Evans-Brown, Sam. “Lessons from Lempster: Town Has Found Wind Farm to Be Neither Blessing nor Curse.” NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio, 20 Nov. 2012, nhpr.org/post/lessons-lempster-town-has-found-wind-farm-be-neither-blessing-nor-curse. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.

"New Hampshire." US Energy Information Administration, 19 Oct. 2023, www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NH. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.

"Power Plant Profile: Seabrook 1, US." Power Technology, 2024, www.power-technology.com/data-insights/power-plant-profile-seabrook-1-us/?cf-view. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.