New Hampshire Demonstrates How States Can Take the Lead on Streamlining Approvals for Solar and Storage
A version of this article was originally published by Solar Power World.
For years, New Hampshire solar developers and their customers have faced one regulatory roadblock after another, making it much harder to connect solar projects to the grid than in neighboring states. New Hampshire is last in the region for solar deployment, in large part due to its outdated interconnection procedures. These rules govern how clean energy projects are connected to the grid and, in turn, influence where they can be deployed.
Developers like Matt Doubleday and Nat Haslett have experienced firsthand the challenges presented by these regulations—projects stalled, customers left waiting, solar deployment opportunities lost. Which is why they and other clean energy stakeholders were so excited when state regulators opened a process to address these long-standing barriers. Despite limited guidance from the regulatory agency leading the process, a diverse group of participating stakeholders remained committed, working together intentionally to maintain structure throughout the process. Through collaboration—among utilities, local industry, and Clean Energy New Hampshire (CENH), coupled with support from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) and Energy Policy Design Institute (EPDI)—the group developed consensus recommendations that could position New Hampshire to become a national leader in interconnection procedures.
The catch? Whether the state’s utility regulators and a legislative committee currently reviewing the draft rule will keep stakeholder recommendations intact in its final ruling. And the stakes are higher than ever.
With the recent passage of H.R.1—“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—cutting tax credits for clean energy and tightening margins for developers, the need for clear interconnection procedures and efficient processes is greater than ever. The focus has now shifted to states to ensure customers and developers can deploy the clean energy they want. New Hampshire’s interconnection reform process to date offers a strong example of how state leadership and stakeholder collaboration can drive clean energy progress amid shifting federal policy. Read on for the story of how New Hampshire arrived at this crossroads and what’s next.
New Hampshire Interconnection Challenges: Insights from Solar Developers
For years, New Hampshire’s interconnection rules have posed challenges and frustrations for solar and energy storage developers and their customers. “Interconnection rules have been a very big challenge in New Hampshire—in large part because there’s really just no rules on the books for projects that are above a megawatt,” explains Matt Doubleday with ReWild Renewables, a New Hampshire-based community solar developer. “So, for our projects that are above one megawatt, you’re operating in a space without rules and that’s frustrating because we’re then reliant on what the utility is willing to do—and utilities are resource-constrained.”
“[F]or our projects that are above one megawatt, you’re operating in a space without rules.” —Matt Doubleday, ReWild Renewables
Nat Haslett with ReVision Energy, a regional company that develops projects ranging from residential rooftop systems to larger community solar applications, has seen the difference in New Hampshire’s interconnection process for larger projects. “We’ve seen some consistent success and effectiveness from existing utility processes around the interconnection of smaller projects. We have also seen the absence of clear and robust procedures and timelines have a real detrimental effect on our ability to successfully construct projects in the larger range of the work we do.”
Haslett contends that these issues have been particularly pronounced in New Hampshire when compared to Maine and Massachusetts. “When the interconnection process is working well, those rules are hopefully an afterthought or a small, routine piece of the development process. And when they’re not, they become a critical pain point and a real challenge for getting projects successfully across the finish line.”
The Reality of New Hampshire’s Current Interconnection Rules
In 2024, ReWild Renewables joined two other community solar developers and filed a formal complaint with the New Hampshire Department of Energy (NHDOE) due to ongoing frustration with interconnection delays. The Department of Energy’s proceeding (CPT 2024-005) revealed deficiencies in the state’s interconnection procedures. After reviewing the substance of the complaint, the NHDOE concluded in its final decision that the delays being experienced by the solar developers were not a result of Eversource Energy disregarding the state’s interconnection rules but were instead a result of a lack of specificity in the rules themselves. The NHDOE recognized that the interconnection delays remain “very concerning.”
The deficiencies of New Hampshire’s interconnection rules were highlighted in Freeing the Grid, an initiative led by the IREC that evaluates and grades each state’s interconnection procedures. In the 2023 edition of Freeing the Grid, New Hampshire earned a “D” grade. This grading indicates that the state has not adopted a majority of the interconnection best practices identified in Freeing the Grid and should plan to significantly update its interconnection procedures to streamline review processes, reduce costs, and improve transparency for interconnection applicants and utilities.
“We have also seen the absence of clear and robust procedures and timelines have a real detrimental effect on our ability to successfully construct projects in the larger range of the work we do.” —Nat Haslett, ReVision Energy
The Road to Change
The story of New Hampshire’s interconnection reform began well before ReWild’s complaint in 2024. In 2022, advocates, developers, and state leaders came together to address the ineffectiveness of the state’s interconnection rules, which led to the passage of Senate Bill 262 by the state senate in May that year. The legislation set the stage for change, tasking NHDOE with investigating customer-generator interconnection. Lawmakers urged the agency to look beyond state borders—to evaluate nationwide best practices set forth in IREC’s 2019 Model Interconnection Procedures, a comprehensive resource for refining rules for connecting distributed energy resources to the grid.
By December 2022, the DOE had launched a formal proceeding to take on that challenge. Over the course of the next year, stakeholders with a vested interest in interconnection rules—including solar companies, utilities, advocates, and technical partners—weighed in. Clean Energy New Hampshire (CENH), a leading nonprofit voice in the state’s clean energy movement, led the charge for the development of clearer interconnection rules. By the end of 2023, consensus had formed: stakeholders agreed change was needed, whether through refining the existing rules or creating entirely new ones.
Although NHDOE had not provided clear guidance on next steps for addressing the need to change interconnection rules, stakeholders carried this momentum into 2024. In July, Senate Bill 391 was passed—this time with a clear directive for NHDOE to move from study to action. The bill formally directed NHDOE to open a rulemaking process to establish uniform procedures for interconnecting distributed energy resources (DERs) to the electrical grid. Once again, the legislation pointed to IREC’s Model Interconnection Procedures as a national benchmark.
By November 2024, the rulemaking process was underway. What began as an investigation two years earlier had evolved into a full-scale collaborative effort by a wide range of stakeholders all working toward drafting a new set of interconnection rules that meet the needs of all parties.
New Hampshire’s Interconnection Rulemaking Process
Doubleday, who was concurrently navigating ReWild’s complaint before NHDOE and the rulemaking process ordered by the legislature, realized early in the process that the current resources would not result in draft rules that all parties would be satisfied with.
“There [were] a lot of opinions and no sort of middle voice that was leading the effort. It was left up to all of the parties and stakeholders to decide how they wanted to proceed with consensus and non-consensus items in developing these draft rules that would be put forward to the Department of Energy,” recounts Doubleday.
Doubleday noted that the rulemaking process leaned heavily on the state agency’s resources, which were already stretched thin. Organizations including CENH and IREC had already taken active roles in advancing the process, with CENH serving as a convener and IREC offering technical guidance to ensure alignment with nationwide practices. However, Doubleday suspected that bringing in additional support, such as a third party, could help usher the process along. To efficiently manage competing interests, put pen to paper, and develop the new rules, Ted Ko, Facilitator and Executive Director of the Energy Policy Design Institute (EPDI) was invited by IREC to observe a meeting to offer insights for improving the process.
“I attended one of the meetings and it was immediately clear that the process was stuck with little direction on what to talk about or how to prioritize topics to work on,” explains Ko.
The Energy Policy Design Institute (EPDI) works with state energy agencies and stakeholders to design rules that support clean, reliable, and fair electricity systems. EPDI uses a “design‑thinking” style approach—turning what can be long, messy regulatory fights into structured, collaborative design processes. Ko did exactly that, guiding the group through a prioritization practice that enabled the group to pick up the pen and begin drafting.
Normally, the state regulatory agency would be responsible for leading the drafting process, but this support was not forthcoming from NHDOE. As such, Jessica Chiavara was informally tasked by parties to translate the consensus and non-consensus items into a working document. Jessica Chiavara serves as senior counsel at Eversource Energy, the state’s largest electric utility. Initially, parties based their recommendations on utility tariffs in Massachusetts, where Eversource and another New Hampshire utility, Unitil, also do business. Chiavara soon discovered that translating a utility tariff in Massachusetts to a set of agency rules in New Hampshire was going to be an enormous undertaking. As a result, parties agreed that using IREC’s Model Interconnection Procedures as a framework would provide the structure needed to develop a set of interconnection rules. Chiavara and IREC worked around the clock to draft a set of rules building upon IREC’s Model Interconnection Procedures and making sure the language matched consensus items agreed upon by stakeholders.
“The IREC partnership was invaluable because Eversource wants a process that works equally well for rooftop solar to a five megawatt solar field and everything in between. Having that aligned objective was incredibly important and very helpful in getting through some of the stickier areas because when you’re drafting rules, you have to take everybody affected or potentially affected by those rules into account,” explained Chiavara. “There were some tough conversations, but ultimately stakeholders tried to come up with a process that worked for as many people as possible and in a way that was consistent with New Hampshire policy.”
“There were some tough conversations, but ultimately stakeholders tried to come up with a process that worked for as many people as possible and in a way that was consistent with New Hampshire policy.” —Jessica Chiavara, Eversource Energy
The rulemaking process concluded with a set of draft rules that incorporated IREC’s Model Interconnection Procedures—a product that all parties were satisfied with and hope to see implemented with minimal changes by the NHDOE.
In addition, IREC staff participated in numerous conversations with New Hampshire stakeholders related to particularly thorny issues, such as setting up the right technical checks and ensuring that the processes in place would remain reliable as the market grew. “Without the resources that IREC was able to contribute to this process, the industry and utility collaboration to inform the draft rule process would not have made nearly the progress in aligning on a comprehensive draft rule set,” contends Haslett. “The expertise and facilitation IREC contributed was the critical ingredient in bringing the goodwill the group had assembled into a useful format for further stakeholder discussion.”
Over the course of seven months, representatives of New Hampshire’s three investor-owned utilities, several solar companies, and IREC staff met informally to identify areas of consensus and non-consensus. During that same period, the NHDOE, with assistance from EPDI, hosted a series of formal working group technical sessions to review the progress of the parties with a wider audience of stakeholders. Following that period, parties engaged in an intense two-month process to develop draft rules. The final proposed rules were submitted to NHDOE on August 1, 2025.
It was the combination of committed stakeholders and the resources they brought to the table that made this progress possible. Through legislative advocacy and stakeholder engagement, Clean Energy New Hampshire served as a key facilitator that helped leverage meaningful relationships across utilities, regulators, industry, and technical partners.
“For advocates in other states, my advice would be to start early in building relationships across utilities, regulators, and industry groups, and to bring in experienced technical partners—like IREC—who can provide both credibility and clarity,” shares Chris Skoglund, Director of Energy Transition for CENH. “It also helps to ground discussions in concrete examples, such as neighboring state standards, while still giving stakeholders the space to adapt those models to their own context. Above all, patience and persistence matter: these processes are long and detailed, but if advocates can keep stakeholders focused on shared goals—lower costs, reliability, and equitable access—the outcomes will be durable and broadly supported.”
Current Progress
The draft rules are now making their way through a review process by the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR). If stakeholder recommendations remain intact through this process, New Hampshire residents could soon see their state’s Freeing the Grid grade improve from a “D’ to an “A”—a notable leap forward. For both developers and customers, these reforms would signal a promising future: a more efficient and transparent path to connecting clean energy projects to the grid.
New Hampshire’s interconnection reform is a reminder of what’s possible when strong frameworks, dedicated resources, and engaged stakeholders work in concert. The result: lasting, meaningful change. It’s also a testament to the resilience of renewable energy progress—even amid federal policy shifts.
