Frequently Asked Questions

“Heating Degree Days,” or HDD for short, are a measurement used to quantify how cold it is outside on a given day. HDD are used within the energy industry to estimate how hard a furnace needs to work to keep your home or business warm. The colder it is outside, the higher the number of HDD. As temperatures drop and HDD increase, more energy is needed to compensate and maintain a comfortable temperature inside buildings.

Home Energy Reports are designed to provide information to help you understand your home's energy use and find smart ways to make your home more efficient. Each report will provide you with information about your home's energy use, comparison of your monthly and annual usage and personalized tips to help you save money and energy.

You'll be able to compare your home's energy use to the energy use of similarly sized homes in your area and also see how your home's energy use changes over time and across seasons. In each report, you’ll learn ways to save energy, including information on rebates and other special programs we offer.

As a Unitil customer you can choose from a variety of flexible payment options. Please note that while most of our options are free, some incur a small processing fee. If you would like to pay your bill for free, you can do so through your MyUnitil account or pay as a guest. You can also enroll in our convenient automatic bank draft option (UniPay).

Alternatively, you can pay by mail, in person at your nearest Western Union location, or over the phone (call 1-888-301-7700). Please note that while paying through our automated phone system is free, if you would like to make a credit card payment (Visa or Mastercard) with a live representative you will incur a $2.75 processing fee.

Mail your payment to:

Unitil
P.O. Box 981077
Boston, MA 02298-10100

Having trouble paying your bill? Get financial assistance from a variety of programs that can help with your energy costs.

You can receive outage updates and alerts by setting your communication preferences in your MyUnitil account. You can also call our Customer Service team and we will set your communication preferences on your behalf to receive an email, text or call when your power has been restored.

Yes. We comply with state and federal requirements and regulations and use the latest encryption technologies to ensure the safety and security of your information. We encourage all customers to use strong passwords and to log out when leaving the site as an extra precaution.

Yes, your account number will change if you change your address.

Sometimes obstacles blocking access to our power lines can slow the restoration process. That could include downed trees, blocked roads, unplowed or flooded streets or dangerous situations. Conditions throughout the system can also cause delays. Several small scattered outages can be more time consuming to repair because they involve individual stops to reconnect lines to each home.

Yes, it will come back. Although your restoration is important to us, sometimes there are more urgent priorities that need to be addressed, such as public safety hazards, critical care, emergency operations centers and communication centers.

The truck may also be on the way to a transmission line, substation or circuit outage that will restore the greatest number of customers at the same time, you included. Our crews work round the clock during an outage, so they will return to your location as soon as they can if you remain without power.

It could be that your neighbor is served on a different circuit, but there could be trouble in just your section of the line or in the equipment that services you directly. Or, the cause of the outage could be an individual service problem at your home, unrelated to Unitil.

It sounds like something unexpected happened in the field. Our estimated restoration times are based on the best information we have, but they are still ultimately estimates. We will update those times if needed as an outage unfolds overtime. If we have additional information we think helps explain what is going on, we will relay that info via Twitter (@Unitil).