By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — State utility regulators voted to prohibit New Hampshire and Maine consumer advocates from participating in a review of a $385 million transmission line upgrade that has drawn criticism from officials, advocates, and property owners and residents along the 49-mile project.
Monday, the Site Evaluation Committee voted unanimously to block the consumer advocates from New Hampshire and Maine from participating in a case brought by the towns of Easton and Bethlehem requesting the panel take jurisdiction of the project.
Regulators said the Office of Consumer Advocate does not have statutory authority to intervene because the SEC is not the appropriate venue to review their concerns.
The SEC did vote to allow the Counsel for the Public in the Attorney General’s Office to intervene in the case.
New Hampshire Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis said Eversource wants to send the cost for the $400 million project right to ratepayers without state or federal scrutiny.
“By excluding ratepayers from having a voice in this case, it becomes more likely that ratepayers will not be able to exert any meaningful input in future cases on the billions of dollars of other projects under consideration, the costs of which will be added to ratepayers bills regardless of whether there is any real consideration of the need for them,” Kreis said.
The X-178 transmission line project runs from Campton to Whitefield through the towns of Thornton, Woodstock, Easton, Sugar Hill, Lisbon, and Bethlehem and is an “asset condition” project which allows utilities to rebuild or rehabilitate existing regional transmission lines and charge New England ratepayers for the cost with little or no scrutiny to determine long-range needs and costs.
The critics of the process say it is one of the major reasons transmission costs have exploded on customers’ bills over the last decade.
An “asset condition” project does not require a planning process or approval from the state’s Site Evaluation Committee, according to Eversource and grid manager ISO-New England.
The X-178 project would be a “complete rebuild” replacing existing wooden towers with larger metal structures.
The cost of the upgrade would be distributed to electric customers across the New England region.
New Hampshire ratepayers would be responsible for about 10 percent of the cost of the upgrade or about $39 million and can be collected when construction begins.
Eversource says the entire line needs to be rebuilt due to insect and weather damage to the existing towers and to upgrade technology.
Kreis maintains the damaged wooden poles amount to about 50 out of 600 poles being damaged, although Eversource says the number is about 100 needing emergency replacement.
The company would replace the wooden poles with larger metal structures and run fiber optic lines along with the transmission lines to provide more reliability with real time data.
“What an outrageous example of unconstrained spending of ratepayer money,” said Kreis. “And now Eversource has convinced the state regulators that ratepayers should have no voice, no seat at the table, when their plan for lavish spending on the X-178 is under review.”
He noted not only the Maine consumer advocate, but the others around New England are concerned about the ill-conceived project that will add to ratepayers bills at a time when many people struggle to pay their electric bills.
But Kaitlyn G. Woods, a spokesperson for Eversource, disagreed with Kreis’s assessment, calling it a critical project that is necessary to address rapidly deteriorating infrastructure that serves thousands of customers in northern New Hampshire.
“We take seriously the concerns that have been expressed by the consumer advocates, and we’ve been closely communicating with them to address those concerns,” Woods said.
She noted her company had to make emergency repairs to the line this weekend to avoid a negative impact on customers.
“Our transmission system is the superhighway of the power grid, and maintaining and modernizing our aging transmission infrastructure is critical to making it more resilient to the increasingly extreme weather we’re experiencing in northern New Hampshire,” Woods said. “We’ve proposed a full line rebuild as the most cost-effective, efficient and environmentally responsible long-term solution to address the reliability risks for approximately 30,000 of our customers served by this critical infrastructure.”
Kreis stressed he disagreed with the decision to exclude both his office and that of Maine’s consumer advocate.
“Asset condition spending around the region is out of control and I know that all of the ratepayer advocates in New England are as alarmed as (Maine Public Advocate Bill Harwood) and I are. Eversource, as the region’s largest transmission owner, has not heard the last of us.”
After another hearing later this fall on the merits of the two towns’ request to have the SEC take jurisdiction, the committee will decide to approve or reject the request.
Kreis noted he and Harwood have 30 days to seek rehearing of the decision to exclude them as intervenors, with possible appeals to the New Hampshire Supreme Court thereafter.
Kreis noted most of the attention is on Eversource’s plan to raise distribution rates to residential customers by 48 percent if the Public Utilities Commission agrees, but noted the transmission business is subject to only laissez-faire regulation at the federal level, and is far more lucrative.
“It’s a guaranteed return on transmission investment north of 11 percent,” Kreis said. “And every dime of that return comes straight out of the pockets of ratepayers, many of whom struggle to afford the essential public service that electricity has become.”
A similar asset condition project along the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River from a Bellows Falls substation to one in Wilder, Vermont by National Grid would cost $470 million and is also under consideration.
A lawsuit has been filed in US District Court in Concord on the X-178 project by Kristina Pastoriza, who lives on a 400-acre property in Easton that would be affected by the upgrade, and Ruth Ward of Stoddard, an owner of the property, who is a state Senator, claiming federal and regional electric industry regulars and managers failed to follow regional planning requirements and instead exempted large transmission projects from that process.
The pair claims federal, regional and local electric industry officials and regulators reneged on their duties to ensure fair and reasonable electric rates.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
