By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
Monday marks the two-year anniversary of Eversource’s decision to abandon its plan to build a $ 1.6 billion high-voltage transmission line 192 miles through New Hampshire from north to south.
The Connecticut-based utility pulled the plug on what would have been the largest construction project in the state since the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant after the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld the site assessment committee’s 7-0 ruling that the company’s motion was one with Was rejected the week before.
The court agreed with the SEC that the project would inappropriately affect the orderly development of the area, one of four criteria required for approval of a major utility project.
Northern Pass was first proposed in 2011 and rejected by the SEC in 2018. Between and in between, opponents and supporters waged a fierce battle that cost millions of dollars.
The project has been rejected by environmentalists and conservationists, small business owners, residents along the route, local community and planning officials, and all but two of the host communities.
The project was supported by large companies and business organizations, trade unions and representatives of business development.
Northern Pass was originally selected to provide 1,200 megawatts of hydro Quebec power to Massachusetts under that state’s Clean Power Act, but when the SEC rejected the project, Massachusetts officials turned to a proposed transmission line through Maine.
The line is currently under construction and has received all required state and federal approvals, but is facing a referendum.
And a nasty dispute has developed over a system upgrade required to connect hydropower to the New England grid.
The battle is being waged before government and systems regulators and the court of public opinion.
While New Hampshire may think its participation in the transmission project ended two years ago, the stumbling block is a multi-million dollar breaker at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant that happens to be supplying about 1,200 megawatts of electricity to the New England grid.
When the new 1,200 megawatts go online, roughly that much will have to be withdrawn unless the New England grid is expanded significantly in the foreseeable future.
The facility, whose construction along with two other utility companies bankrupted New Hampshire public services, is now owned by NextEra, a Florida-based utility company that claims Avangrid, a Connecticut-based subsidiary of Spanish energy company Iberdrola, owns the new gearbox builds line, would like to ignore its lost sales due to the downtime required to replace the circuit breaker.
Avangrid will pay for the breaker upgrade but says the job can be done if the facility is shut down to refuel.
Complaints have been filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the dispute involved the regional grid operator and advocacy groups.
NextEra is against the Maine transfer project and has provided some “dark money” for the organized opposition, if you believe the Avangrid officials.
That should come as no surprise, as NextEra has been cited as a source of funding for Protect the Granite State, a group that actively and financially opposes Northern Pass and is working with New England Power Generators to oppose the project.
The opponents and advocates organizations for the Maine transmission project are almost identical to those who oppose and support the Northern Pass transmission line.
Many of the arguments for and against are the same: it would provide years of clean renewable energy, while opponents claim that it is not reducing carbon emissions, it is just moving them elsewhere.
Massachusetts officials say the project is necessary to meet government clean energy goals.
However, environmentalists argue that the project is damaging undeveloped forests and hampering the push for renewable energy projects in the region.
Like many industries now and in the past, the current entrenched system does not go smoothly into that dark night or some may call it the future.
New England knows this scenario all too well. The textile industry was once a base for production along the area’s waterways, but now these buildings have either disappeared or repurposed and the machines were relocated long ago when the owners chased cheaper labor.
The computer industry was the savior of the region in the 1980s, but it also relocated production elsewhere – mainly overseas – along with many military equipment suppliers who together caused the housing and bank crash in the early 1990s.
Solar and wind power used to be unreliable and expensive, but they are no longer as cheaper products and large batteries open up the energy market to local government agencies and individual homeowners.
Wind power projects out in the ocean and mostly out of sight now have everyone’s attention and the New England states are invading each other and trying to get a step further.
The electricity grid of the future will be operated in smaller cells and the power sources will also be more local and not require burning fossil fuels or nuclear generation to light up a neighborhood.
Change is inevitable over time, both in terms of climate change and the limited amount of fossil fuels in the soil.
But creating another system will have a devastating impact on the companies currently producing electricity, be it fossil fuels, atoms, or wood, whose assets have all but disappeared.
The situation today is similar to that of the newspapers, with many sticking to the old model for as long as possible while advertising revenue continues to migrate elsewhere and people expect to get their news for free.
Newsprint costs continue their upward spiral while circulation falls behind.
As more and more people are installing solar panels on their roofs or small wind turbines in their garden, less and less electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear power is required.
In New Hampshire, we are behind most of our neighbors in the energy distribution movement.
Massachusetts’ goal is to have zero emissions from power generation by 2050, but that may be nearly impossible to achieve and some “old technology” will be needed from time to time.
The jury is not yet sure how clean hydropower is, with its habitat destruction and the release of carbon from rotting trees in flooded areas behind dams.
But most would agree that the carbon footprint is less severe than burning coal, oil or natural gas.
Other technologies for generating electricity from ocean currents and less damaging dams are available today, but not on the scale of Hydro-Quebec’s massive grids.
The irony of the open battle between NextEra and Avangrid is that both companies are trying to preserve the old infrastructure in the near future.
The future lies in small, local projects and aggregations so that communities can work together to get better wholesale prices.
And Maine, like New Hampshire, has to decide whether to be an extension cord for Massachusetts’ appetite for clean energy, as it is only a short-term solution to a much broader problem that requires a more regional approach with local options.
The battle between NextEra and Avangrid won’t end anytime soon as Canadian hydropower remains closed with no transmission route to the Bay State.
At some point enough money will be put on the table and power will flow as both sides have a bigger battle with what is to come.
Garry Rayno can be reached at [email protected].
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state events for InDepthNH.org. During his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. Throughout his career, his coverage has spanned the spectrum of news, from local planning to school and select bodies to national issues such as electrical industry deregulation and the presidential primaries. Rayno lives in New London with his wife Carolyn.
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