New Hampshire § 12-P-16 - Section 12-P:16 Grid Modernization Advisory Group.

§ 12-P-16. Section 12-P:16 Grid Modernization Advisory Group.

I. The department of energy, through the office of energy innovation, shall establish and support a grid modernization advisory group (GMAG) consisting of the following voting members: (a) The commissioner of the department of energy, or designee. (b) The consumer advocate, or designee. (c) Representatives of each of the electric distribution utilities regulated by the public utilities commission and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. (d) Two representatives of distributed energy providers, including at least one with experience interconnecting distributed generation and one with experience interconnecting distributed storage, appointed by the commissioner of the department of energy. (e) A representative of a municipal aggregation supplier, appointed by the commissioner of the department of energy. (f) A representative of a not-for-profit organization representing clean energy, environmental, or consumer issues appointed by the commissioner of the department of energy. (g) A representative of the Business and Industry Association, appointed by that organization. II. (a) The grid modernization advisory group shall consider and provide recommendations to the department and the legislature on issues including, but not limited to: (1) Grid modernization as defined in RSA 374-F:2; (2) Transactive energy and distributed energy resources including advanced meter infrastructure (AMI); (3) Settlement of appropriate price signals for transactive energy at the distribution system level for distributed energy resources; (4) Appropriate customer and distributed energy resources access to temporal price signals. (5) The current and growing electricity reliability challenges in the New Hampshire and New England markets. (6) The role of energy storage in addressing short-term and long-term reliability challenges. (7) Market-based solutions to incentivize the development and connection of large-scale energy storage systems designed to enhance reliability. (8) The use of an indexing storage credit model to incentivize storage market development. (b) The GMAG shall review different cost structures that enable a reasonable portion of costs of distributed generation and storage interconnections to be shared by entities that interconnect future distributed generation or storage to the distribution grid to the extent that such subsequent interconnection is enabled by the investment or costs incurred by the prior entity or entities that interconnect. The GMAG shall provide recommendations to address this issue by September 1, 2024. (c) The department of energy may obtain the services of a consultant for technical support concerning distribution systems and transactive energy to support department of energy staff, the consumer advocate, and the GMAG. The department of energy shall charge a special assessment for any such amounts for this consultant against any utility participating in the grid modernization advisory group and the public utilities commission shall provide for the timely recovery of such amounts for the affected utility. III. A quorum shall be a majority of filled positions. IV. The grid modernization advisory group shall report annually on November 1 on its meetings and any recommendations for legislation, rules, and practices, to the governor, senate president, speaker of the house of representatives, chair of the house and senate committees with jurisdiction over utilities, and the chair of the public utilities commission.