It’s finally here.
Stretched down a 145-mile path through the woods of western Maine, the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line is fully built, tested, and sending juice our way as of Friday.
The route for this $1.6 billion project, developed by Avangrid and Hydro-Quebec, has been rougher than a Somerset County gravel road: Ten years of anxiety. Numerous courtroom fights, including one that overturned a statewide referendum. Political intrigue on Beacon Hill, and in Augusta. Three Avangrid chief executives, four at Hydro-Quebec (plus three acting CEOs).
All for the promise of bringing enough Canadian hydropower into the region to support roughly one million homes — essentially up to one-fifth of Massachusetts’ electricity needs.
Now that the saga is over, it’s time to ask: Just how much extra electricity will New England be getting after all?
The answer, for now: Maybe not all that much.
We have long had an existing major power line between New England and Quebec, known as the “Phase II″ line, dating back to the early 1990s. Grid overseer ISO New England recently told federal regulators that Phase II is the single biggest source of electricity for the six-state region — more than any power plant.
Except when it’s not.
Lately, New England has been shipping power the other direction, to Quebec, across this line. The Canadian reservoirs have receded amid three years of drought conditions. Hydro-Quebec needs to protect its own utility customers, while preparing for the contractual requirements of NECEC and a parallel line that will open soon in New York. That means holding back on the exports.
On many recent days, almost as much electricity has gone north, along Phase II, at certain times as what will be heading south, along NECEC. Think 1,000-plus megawatts coming our way via NECEC, versus 800 to 900 heading the other direction via Phase II.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Back when Hydro-Quebec was working the room to get procurement legislation passed in Boston 10 years ago, the province-owned utility was practically giving its hydropower away. The vast reservoirs of the Great White North were filled, maybe even overflowing. Signing contracts to sell surplus power into the US seemed like a no-brainer.
And so, in the summer of 2016, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a clean-energy bill spurring this state’s three investor-owned utilities — Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil — to ink long-term contracts with Hydro-Quebec to build a new line, and be reimbursed by ratepayers. The hope: securing a new jolt of climate-friendly power to curb energy inflation and improve grid reliability.
Eversource’s Northern Pass proposal in New Hampshire was initially picked, but quickly jettisoned in favor of a backup plan, Avangrid’s NECEC.
That same legislation also established a similar bidding process to jump-start the offshore wind sector, creating contracts that led to the construction of Vineyard Wind. That project, too, has been on a 10-year journey — along an even rockier road than NECEC’s — with an ending that still is not clear thanks to White House antipathy toward this energy source.
The New England Power Generators Association had pushed to ensure the NECEC contracts would translate to a net increase in power over what was typically being imported over Phase II at the time. NEPGA president Dan Dolan said his members foresaw a time when Quebec might get more stingy with its electricity. (A few of his members, notably NextEra, also bankrolled an effort in Maine to stop the power line from going through, out of fear of competition.)
Now, Dolan says, those concerns have been realized. Canadian hydropower can no longer be counted on to provide a huge increase in electricity for New England, he said. Imported electricity from Canada peaked in 2017, and then started falling, per data tracked by NEPGA, a decline that accelerated amid the drought and dwindling water supplies of the last three years.
During the last three months in particular, Phase II has turned into an export line, helping keep the lights on in Quebec.
That trend will change now that NECEC is online, and for good reason. The NECEC line allows power to flow both ways, just like Phase II. But there’s a key difference: Hydro-Quebec is obligated to send us juice over the line, because of the utility contracts that Avangrid used to help finance the project. Phase II, in contrast, is used by Hydro-Quebec to sell opportunistically on the spot market in New England. Once the reservoirs began to dry up, it often was a better bet to buy power from New England than to sell into it.
Serge Abergel, Hydro-Quebec’s US chief operating officer, says it’s only a matter of time before the droughts end and the reservoirs fill up again. Canada has seen cycles like this before, he says. For now, he adds, Hydro-Quebec needs to conserve its water so it has enough to meet the contracts for the NECEC and New York lines.
NECEC, he says, will be a reliable source of baseload power for New England, 24/7. And when Hydro-Quebec can make some money selling back to New England over Phase II, it will do so.
The brainiacs at ISO New England’s command center in Holyoke don’t seem too worried about the exports affecting the reliability of our grid, either. Vamsi Chadalavada, the new CEO at ISO, says he fully expects Hydro-Quebec to meet the conditions of its contracts for the new power line. And on particularly cold or hot days, when we need the power the most, he expects New England’s spot-market prices will be alluring enough for Hydro-Quebec to sell its electricity to us via the Phase II line — like what ended up happening amid the frigid temps on Friday.
This project was supposed to cost around $950 million before NextEra and others financed a referendum in Maine to block it, causing significant delays. But even with the price tag soaring by more than 50 percent, Massachusetts ratepayers should see modest savings, based on new agreements approved a year ago to account for the overruns.
How modest? We’re talking $15 to $20 a year off your electric bills. Just don’t spend it all at once.
Hydro-Quebec’s Abergel joined Governor Maura Healey and other Massachusetts officials at the State House grand staircase on Friday, to celebrate the completion of the NECEC project.
Sure, it’s worth celebrating. There were many times when it wasn’t clear if the project would ever get done. And it’s hard to argue that New England and its grid aren’t better off as a result.
But the huge increase in Canadian hydropower supporting our electric system? That hasn’t turned out quite as expected.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.