Compare Wholesale Electricity Prices with Retail Rates 2003 - 2015

 It's a long time since I had to use excel to create a graph, but David Solomon's article of March 9, 2016, inspired me to give it a shot so people could see exactly how low wholesale electric rates have reduced (or not!) our retail rates.  You can read Mr. Solomon's article here,
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20160310/NEWS05/160319975/1028/news05









All data is from the eia.gov data browser for electricity in New Hampshire.


Even my primitive skills with converting data to a graphic should reveal that despite falling wholesale electricity prices, the retail rates we pay, continue to climb.  Let's look at a few data points.
In 2003, our wholesale electricity rate was $48.97/MWh (equals 4.89 cents/kWh) and our residential retail rate was 11.98 cents/kWh
In 2005, our wholesale electricity rate was $73.37/MWh (equals 7.34 cents/kWh) and our residential retail rate was 13.51 cents/kWh
By 2012, our wholesale electricity rate had fallen to $28.77/MWh (equals 2.88 cents/kWh), but our residential retail rate still climbed to 16.07 cents/kWh.
In 2015, the wholesale rate was $34.29/MWh (equals 3.43 cents/kWh), yet our residential retail rate reached 18.52 cents/kWh!

While I appreciate Dave Solomon's optimism in his title, "Warmest winter means lower electric rates for consumers," historical data indicates otherwise.
The whole argument for the massive overbuild of pipelines for New England relies on the promise that more availability of cheap natural gas will result in lower wholesale prices and, in turn, lower retail rates for consumers.
Clearly, retail electricity rates do not track/follow wholesale electricity rates!  Moreoever, the pipeline proposal from Eversource proposes to lower wholesale rates by only .8 to a little over 1 cent/kWh against the rates for 2013-2014.
The problem with our high electricity rates is actually rooted in our extraordinarily high transmission and distribution charges, forward capacity payments, and stranded costs from the scrubber on the Merrimack Coal plant.

It's time for the BIA to own up to the fact that their whole EnergizeNH campaign is a fraud! 

Warmest winter means lower electric rates for NH consumers - See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20160310/NEWS05/160319975/1028/news05#sthash.stjaSXb4.dpufWarmest

Warmest winter means lower electric rates for NH consumers - See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20160310/NEWS05/160319975/1028/news05#sthash.stjaSXb4.dpuf