Tentative timetable set for project’s CPG approval {$1.2 billion project to run a power line}

Rutland Herald ^ | April 08, 2015 | Dan Colton

[thackney]

A $1.2 billion project to run a power line from Canada to Ludlow may clear its final hurdle before the end of the year.

Jeanne Elias, special counsel and case attorney to the Vermont Public Service Department, said she expects the Vermont Public Service Board to issue a Certificate of Public Good for the proposed New England Clean Power Link, or NECPL by December.

The certificate would green-light a power line which would make its way through 150 miles of Vermont, much of it subterranean. Elias said the project’s tentative schedule forecasts construction commencing in 2017.

She made the announcement Monday during a briefing with the Benson and Fair Haven select boards, where she explained the project’s permitting process to the town officials.

The NECPL proposal would send an underground line from the Canadian border south to Benson, below Lake Champlain. Near Benson, the power line would turn east to a Ludlow converter station, bringing 1,000 megawatts of Canadian green energy into the greater New England market, where some states are eager to purchase renewable energy credits to offset natural gas. With international scope, the investment firm behind the proposal, Transmission Developers Incorporated, or TDI, also applied for federal permitting last year from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“They want to build, basically, an electric highway through Vermont,” said Elias, who spoke Monday night to the Benson and Fair Haven select boards at the Benson Community Hall.

And because the NECPL’s electricity is bound for out of state customers, Elias said, the state of Vermont is able to extract a thoroughfare fee – like tolling interstate drivers on the highway.

For its part, TDI said it pledges to pay for shuttling renewable energy current across Vermont state borders — including $136 million to Vermont Electric Power Company for energy cost reduction.

TDI said it will also pledge $82 million for a Lake Champlain phosphorus cleanup fund, $40 million to support Lake Champlain habitat restoration and recreational improvements, plus $40 million for Vermont’s existing Clean Energy Development fund if the project moves ahead.

Payments would stretch out over the proposal’s 40-year contract.

The PSB, a quasi-judicial organization, determines approval or disapproval of proposals in court-of-law-like hearings — rounds of briefings, testimonies and examinations that can last months. Elias said the project is currently in a “discovery” phase – which, like its counterpart in court, presents evidence for study.

To clarify the project’s impact on the public’s welfare, Elias said, evidence includes expert testimony on NECPL’s environmental and safety issues, among others. And while local select boards and ordinary citizens can lodge complaints and evidence in opposition to a project, the PSB carries the final determination.

Sue Jannsen, Benson Select Board member, said the Monday meeting broadened her understanding of how the project could unfold. “We appreciated that (Elias) came down to explain the process, because we all had questions how much power the Public Service Board has and how they exercise it,” Jannsen said. She explained the Benson Select Board views the prospective NECPL positively, but stressed the proposal’s early stage.

“There are details that have to be worked out yet,” she said. “And both TDI, Benson, and the Public Service Board are aware of that.”

[thackney]

The New England Clean Power Link is a proposed high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line from the Canadian border at Alburgh, Vermont to Ludlow, Vermont along underwater and underground routes. The transmission line will be comprised of two approximately 5” diameter cables — one positively charged and the other negatively charged. The cables will be solid-state dielectric and contain no fluids or gases. The nominal operating voltage of the line will be approximately 300 to 320 kV, and the system will be capable of delivering 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

The proposed underwater portion of the transmission line, approximately 98 miles in length, will be buried to a target depth of 3-4 feet in the bed of Lake Champlain except at water depths of greater than 150 feet where the cables will be placed on the bottom and self-burial of the cables in sediment will occur. In areas where there are obstacles to burial (e.g. existing infrastructure, bedrock), protective coverings will be installed.

The overland portion of the transmission line, approximately 56 miles in length, will be buried approximately four feet underground within existing public (state and town) road or railroad rights-of-way (ROWs). Very short sections of the route at the Lake Champlain entry and exit points, as well as at the converter site in Ludlow, will be located on private land that is controlled by TDI-NE.

In Ludlow, the HVDC line will terminate at a converter station that will change the electrical power from direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC). An underground AC transmission line will then run approximately 0.3 miles along town roads to the existing VELCO 345 kV Coolidge Substation in Cavendish, Vermont where the electricity will be carried on the New England electric grid.

[VTenigma]

Great! Now Hydro Quebec can have a near monopoly on VT electricity. Green my a$$, they flooded 100s of sq. mi. of Canadian wetlands to supply us power at $.38 p/kwh.