Electricity in New Hampshire (2026): Yes, You Can Choose — Here's Whether It's Worth It

Can you choose your electricity provider in New Hampshire?

Yes. New Hampshire deregulated its electricity market, so residential customers can shop for a competitive energy supplier instead of taking Default Energy Service (DES) from their utility. But "can" and "should" are different questions. The honest, regulator-backed verdict: for most homeowners, switching suppliers delivers little to no savings, and the state's own Consumer Advocate has said residential customers "have received essentially no benefits from switching away from default energy service." The bigger lever for your bill isn't picking a supplier — it's usage, weatherization, and avoiding teaser-rate traps.

What electricity actually costs in New Hampshire

New Hampshire's average residential rate sits at 24.6¢/kWh (EIA preliminary 2025) — up 82% since 2005, and climbing at roughly 2.9% a year over the last decade. That's a steady, compounding drift rather than a single spike, which is exactly why "shop once and forget it" strategies tend to underperform: a supplier contract signed two or three years ago is priced against an older, cheaper baseline, and even a "good deal" then can look mediocre against today's default service. The practical takeaway is that the delivery side of your bill (poles, wires, public-benefit charges) has been rising steadily regardless of who supplies your electrons, so supplier-shopping only ever touches part of the total cost.

How the New Hampshire market works

New Hampshire's four utilities — Eversource/PSNH, Unitil, Liberty, and NH Electric Co-op — don't generate power; they deliver it and each procures its own Default Energy Service supply through a competitive wholesale auction held twice a year, with rates resetting February 1 and August 1 under NH Public Utilities Commission oversight. As of this writing, Eversource's residential DES rate is $0.11303/kWh for February 1–July 31, 2026, before the next reset on August 1, 2026. That DES number is only the supply portion of your bill — delivery charges are separate and unaffected by which supplier you choose.

To compare competitive offers against your utility's current DES rate, use the state's official tool: the NH Department of Energy's "Shop for Electric Rates" tool, part of the broader consumer hub at energy.nh.gov/consumers/choosing-energy-supplier. The NH PUC's consumer page on competitive suppliers is a second official reference. Third-party sites like ElectricChoice.com and EnergyBot mirror this same data but are not official sources — verify anything they show against the state tools above.

Since 2019, New Hampshire has also allowed municipal Community Power aggregation on an opt-out basis: if your town has enrolled, its aggregated rate effectively becomes your new default unless you opt out back to DES. This isn't the same thing as picking an individual competitive supplier, and it comes with its own risks (see below).

The traps to watch for

Two distinct warnings apply here, and both are backed by regulators, not anecdotes.

Individual competitive suppliers: NH's Office of the Consumer Advocate's own "buyer beware" guidance says some customers do save money by switching, but many don't — largely because of low introductory "teaser" rates that auto-convert to much higher variable rates after a few months. Staying ahead requires ongoing vigilance most households don't sustain. This mirrors what happened next door in Massachusetts, where the state Attorney General found residential competitive-supplier customers paid over $577 million more than they would have on basic utility service, and a separate analysis found $340 million in overpayment from 2015–2019, concentrated among low-income customers.

Community Power aggregation: the newer municipal alternative showed real promise — the Community Power Coalition of NH reported over $20 million in cumulative customer savings through 2024. But by early 2025, several towns (Bow, Wilmot, and parts of Dover) exited or pulled back after the coalition's rates spiked to 14–14.9¢/kWh — above the 11–13¢ utility default — following an approximately $8 million mismanagement loss the coalition is now recouping by charging members more. As one town official put it: "We were told community power was going to save us money. That's not what's happening here."

A practical checklist for New Hampshire homeowners

• Find your utility's current Default Energy Service rate on your latest bill or via the NH Department of Energy's shop tool, and use that as your baseline — not a marketing flyer's number.
• Check whether your town has adopted Community Power aggregation; if so, confirm your current per-kWh rate and whether it still beats DES before assuming it's automatically cheaper.
• If you're considering a competitive supplier, read the contract length and early-termination penalty before signing — most losses trace back to a teaser rate that resets higher after a few months.
• Re-check your rate every six months around the February 1 / August 1 DES reset dates, since "set and forget" is precisely the failure mode regulators warn about.
• Put more effort into the delivery side of the equation than the supply side: insulation, air sealing, and an efficient electrical and HVAC setup reduce total kWh used, which moves the bill more reliably than supplier-switching does.
• If your roof and budget allow, model solar panels against your real usage — at 24.6¢/kWh and rising, offsetting consumption has a more durable payoff than chasing a lower per-kWh supply rate.

Sources

• U.S. Energy Information Administration — Average Price of Electricity by State
• NH Department of Energy — Shop for Electric Rates
• NH Department of Energy — Choosing an Energy Supplier
• NH Public Utilities Commission — Competitive Energy Suppliers
• Energy Choice Matters — NH default service coverage
• Daily Energy Insider — Eversource default service rate filing
• NH Office of the Consumer Advocate — Default Energy Service reforms
• NH OCA — Buyer Beware guidance
• Valley News — NH towns leaving Community Power coalition
• NH Department of Energy — scam warning