A bill that would let New Hampshire homeowners be compensated for electricity their home batteries push back onto the grid, when those batteries are charged by on-site solar panels or other renewable sources, has cleared the Legislature and is now sitting on the desk of Gov. Kelly Ayotte. House Bill 1718, from prime sponsor Rep. Michael Vose, an Epping Republican, instructs the New Hampshire Department of Energy and the Public Utilities Commission to design a formal framework for crediting customers for that exported power, according to reporting in the New Hampshire Bulletin.

For most Granite Staters, the headline is plain: if you have rooftop solar with a home battery, the law would draw a clearer, safer path for sending stored sunshine back to the grid in the evening, when demand is highest and prices are steepest, and getting paid for it. The Senate gave the bill final approval on Thursday after the House passed it in March, and the bill now waits on the governor’s signature or veto.

What the bill actually does

Net metering is the policy that lets a homeowner with solar panels feed surplus electricity back into the utility grid and receive a bill credit in return. New Hampshire has had a version of net metering on the books for years, but it was written for an era when home solar generated power and either used it on site or fed it directly back to the utility in real time. Batteries were rare, expensive, and largely an afterthought.

That has changed. Home battery systems from companies like Tesla, Enphase, FranklinWH, and others have moved from luxury items to a real consumer category, often paired with new rooftop solar installations or added to existing systems. The trouble is that New Hampshire’s net metering rules did not clearly say what happens when the kilowatt-hours flowing back to the grid came out of a battery rather than directly off a panel. Liberty Utilities has been running a small program that allows it, but for most customers and most utilities, the rules were murky.

HB1718 ends that ambiguity. It directs the New Hampshire Department of Energy to write rules covering how battery systems are installed in customers’ homes and interconnected to the grid, including potential safety requirements and size restrictions. It directs the Public Utilities Commission to develop the rate structure: the terms, conditions, and credits that decide how much a homeowner actually earns for the energy they export from a battery.

To prevent abuse, the bill includes an important guardrail. To qualify for net metering credits, an eligible battery must be configured to charge only from on-site renewable generation, such as the rooftop solar panels in the same yard. In other words, a homeowner cannot fill a battery with cheap grid power overnight and then sell it back as if it were solar.

There are, however, a few common-sense exemptions. Utilities would be allowed to manage residential batteries from offsite in certain circumstances, such as topping them up in advance of a forecast severe storm or pulling on them collectively to shave a demand peak across the network. Deana Dennis, director of regulatory affairs for the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, told an April Senate hearing those carve-outs are practical accommodations for a grid that is becoming more dynamic.

The case Vose and clean energy advocates are making

Vose, the Epping Republican who sponsored the bill, has argued the change is mostly common sense.

“Logically, it makes sense,” he said in a phone call this week. “If you can export the kilowatts, it doesn’t really matter whether you export them directly from your solar panels or from a battery, as long as you put those kilowatts in the battery with your solar panels.”

His pitch to fellow lawmakers leaned on the idea of investment certainty. Households that put down tens of thousands of dollars on a solar-plus-storage system want to know that the math will work, that the policy will not change underneath them, and that they will be able to earn back the energy they paid to capture. “The legislation basically removes any doubt from anyone’s mind that if they choose to do this, if they choose to make this investment, that they’ll be able to recover their investment,” Vose said.

Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, called the bill a “modest step forward” for the state’s net metering policies in an April hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. His group has long argued that New Hampshire’s clean-energy rules lag behind neighbors in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine, where utilities and regulators have spent the last several years pushing storage-friendly rate designs and incentive programs.

The advocates’ broader argument is grid-shaped rather than ideological. Solar panels generate their biggest output near midday, when the sun is strongest, but residential electricity demand peaks in the morning and again in the early evening, after the sun is already setting. A house without a battery has to send its midday surplus back to the grid in real time, when wholesale power is cheap and the system does not particularly need more of it. A house with a battery can store that midday solar and discharge it during peak hours, when the grid is straining and prices are highest. That is exactly when extra electrons are most valuable to everyone else on the line.

“The only way that solar makes sense is if you can combine it with batteries,” Vose said.

He acknowledged the up-front cost question many homeowners are already wrestling with. “It does cost more money to combine a battery with your solar system. But it should pay for itself in the long run, just by making the energy more available to yourself, and to the grid when it needs it,” he said.

What it means for Granite State homeowners

If Ayotte signs the bill, no checks go out tomorrow. The Department of Energy and the Public Utilities Commission still have to write the rules and the rate structure. Those proceedings will likely include public comment, testimony from utilities like Eversource, Unitil, and Liberty, and input from clean-energy groups and consumer advocates. The shape of the final framework will matter a great deal: the value of a stored kilowatt-hour to a homeowner can swing widely depending on whether regulators choose a flat retail-rate credit, a time-of-use credit that pays more during peak hours, or a more complicated avoided-cost formula.

A homeowner considering solar-plus-storage today should not throw away their quote, but they should ask their installer to walk through how the new framework, once written, might change their economics. Installers are likely to begin marketing batteries more aggressively if a clear net metering pathway is established, particularly in the wake of growing pressure on transmission costs and bills passed through to ratepayers by utilities like Eversource.

The bill also lands in the middle of a broader cost-of-living debate in New Hampshire. Energy bills, like grocery bills, are politically combustible. The Ayotte administration has spoken in general terms about wanting to keep ratepayer costs in check, and several lawmakers in both chambers have been pushing back on programs they say shift costs from solar customers to non-solar customers. Whether storage-paired net metering changes that balance, or simply turns more rooftops into useful grid assets, will be a question utilities and regulators argue out in the next rulemaking phase. New England has been bracing for tighter winter peaks for years, and many policy analysts believe distributed battery storage in homes and small businesses is one of the cheaper ways to take the edge off those peaks without building new fossil-fueled peaker plants.

What happens next

Ayotte has not yet signaled whether she plans to sign HB1718, let it become law without her signature, or veto it. The bill cleared both chambers without the dramatic floor fights that have surrounded some of this session’s other energy and ratepayer bills, which suggests it may have a clearer path to the governor’s signature than, say, this year’s more divisive proposals on transmission policy and utility cost recovery.

If she signs it, expect the Department of Energy and the Public Utilities Commission to open dockets to draft the framework. Stakeholders are likely to fight over the eligibility rules, the rate structure, interconnection standards, and the size limits on residential battery systems. Clean Energy New Hampshire and the Community Power Coalition will be at the table, as will the investor-owned utilities and the consumer advocate’s office.

For homeowners, the most important moment will likely come a year or two from now, when the Public Utilities Commission rules become final, and customers can sign up under a clearly defined program rather than the patchwork that exists today. For lawmakers, HB1718 is a relatively low-drama win in a session that has been heavy on energy fights. And for the state’s broader climate resilience push and grid planning conversations, it is one more piece of a strategy that increasingly assumes batteries, not just panels, are part of the answer. Even readers debating the value of solar at all should bear in mind the broader regional pressure to cut bills through efficiency and demand response, as discussed in coverage of blue-state energy efficiency reversals affecting utility bills.

FAQ

What does HB1718 actually do?

HB1718 directs the New Hampshire Department of Energy and the Public Utilities Commission to create a formal framework that lets homeowners with solar panels and battery storage be compensated for electricity they export to the grid from those batteries. Today the rules are not clear for most utility customers, even though Liberty Utilities runs a limited version of the program already.

Will the new rules pay me to sell back grid power I stored overnight?

No. The bill requires that an eligible battery be configured to charge only from on-site renewable generation, such as a homeowner's rooftop solar. Limited utility-managed exceptions are allowed, for example to charge a battery in advance of a forecast severe storm.

How much will I earn per kilowatt-hour?

That is not yet decided. The Public Utilities Commission is being directed to develop the rate structure, including terms and conditions for credits. Final numbers will depend on that rulemaking, which is likely to take months and will draw input from utilities, clean-energy groups, and consumer advocates.

Does the bill require me to install a battery?

No. HB1718 is opt-in. It simply creates a clear set of rules for homeowners who choose to install solar-plus-storage and want to be paid for what they export. Homeowners with no solar, no battery, or only one of the two are not affected.

When does the law take effect if Ayotte signs it?

The bill takes effect on the schedule written into it, but the practical impact arrives only after the Department of Energy and the Public Utilities Commission complete their rulemaking. Homeowners should expect at least several months, and likely longer, before the framework is fully operational and utilities begin enrolling customers under it.

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