NEWINGTON -- In an effort to save Little Bay from potential impact of Eversource’s proposed Seacoast Reliability Project, the town of Newington offered an alternative plan to the N.H. Department of Environmental Services.
Referred to as the Gosling Road alternative, ISO-New England, which has oversight of electricity in the region, dismissed it based on cost and as a result the proposal was never considered by DES. The DES and state agencies must issue final permits and conditions to the state’s Site Evaluation Committee before it could permit Eversource to begin construction.
The proposed Seacoast Reliability Project is a 115-kiloVolt transmission line between the Madbury and Portsmouth substations, a key piece in Eversource’s plan to improve power transmission to meet the region’s growing demand. The Seacoast’s electric demand is increasing and is expected to represent approximately 25 percent of New Hampshire’s electric demand in 2020, according to Eversource.
One mile of the transmission line would be buried under Little Bay between Durham and Newington, but both towns object.
In earlier written testimony, Newington Planning Board chairman Denis Hebert said Eversource’s preferred transmission line would cause environmental impact to Little Bay, the University of New Hampshire campus, Durham and Newington residential areas, National Historic Resources and the economic interests of businesses dependent on the Great Bay estuary.
Hebert holds a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from UNH and served as base engineering commander and base fire marshal at Pease Air Force Base before its closure. He has been chairman of the Newington Planning Board since 2002 and has been involved in reviewing the SRP since November 2013, when the town first heard from Eversource about the project.
“Newington respectfully urges the committee to carefully consider that these impacts are either greatly reduced or eliminated with the Gosling Road alternative,” he said.
Hebert said the Gosling Road alternative would impact less geography and resources than the SRP and was ranked higher by ISO-New England. He said the plan would include installation of autotransformers that would change 345 kilowatt to 115kv, essentially increasing the electric voltage at the Gosling Road station in Newington. It would provide an additional 400 megawatts of power versus SRP’s 190 megawatts. It would also avoid construction of high-voltage transmission lines through UNH, Durham, Little Bay, Newington and Portsmouth.
“Gosling Road appears to be a better long-term solution to the Seacoast reliability issues than the SRP and is a sensible solution given that the demand for electricity in the Seacoast region continues to grow,” Hebert said.
In its April 2014 application for certificate of site and facility, Eversource provided details on the Gosling Road alternative and stated the SRP “was selected as the preferred solution as it is much less costly than the other alternative and addresses the needs in the area” previously identified by ISO-NE.
But Hebert in testimony said rejecting a preferred solution like the Gosling Road autotransformer simply on the basis of cost without considering other factors such as environmental and other impacts on host communities “is poor planning and not in the best interest of the ratepayers or the orderly development of the region.”
Project manager James Jiotti in written testimony said Eversource reviewed numerous factors to select an optimal route that is “the shortest alternative and uses existing rail corridors, existing PSNH utility corridors that contain existing distribution and/or transmission lines, an existing underwater utility cable corridor through Little Bay that has been in place since 1902, and underground through sections of municipally maintained roads all the way from Madbury Substation to Portsmouth Substation. No additional easements or fee purchases were required.”
Jiotti said alternative locations for crossing Little Bay were reviewed, but no other utility corridors exist to link the line, which would have required acquiring new property rights and creating a new utility corridor. He said the preferred solution was determined based on numerous factors including cost, operational performance and constructability.
“Cost-effective routes are preferred to minimize the burden on customers to the extent practicable,” he said. “Less impactful routes are preferred to minimize the impact on customers and environmental or cultural resources. At the same time, the preferred route must ensure that the regional electric system meets the identified need.”
According to Eversource, for every $10 million of project costs, New Hampshire ratepayers would pay 0.0014 cents more per kilowatt hour. Estimated costs for Gosling Road and the SRP have increased since 2012 with the Gosling Road alternative increasing from $136 million to $210.5 million and the SRP rising from $110.7 million to $121.4 million.
Hebert said the Gosling Road option included the cost of a back-up transformer, but added it is unclear if one is necessary and eliminating it would reduce the project’s cost.
According to Hebert, Eversource stated if the project line from Madbury to Portsmouth is not approved by the Site Evaluation Committee, costs related to projects supporting the SRP would be stranded and unrecoverable and cannot be used for other solutions like the Gosling Road alternative. Hebert said those projects, all of which did not require SEC approval, were completed or almost completed before the SEC’s final hearing on Eversource’s application.
“It seems that Eversource’s election to proceed with those other projects before securing SEC approval for the project puts pressure on this committee to approve the project in order to avoid creating stranded costs,” Hebert said in his testimony and asked the SEC to not let stranded costs sway its decision. “Eversource put the cart before the horse and unilaterally decided to move ahead with spending millions of dollars on nine other projects that support the Madbury to Portsmouth transmission line before obtaining SEC approval of that line.”
Eversource in a response to the DES stated: “The discussion of the ‘Gosling Road transformer,’ not only goes far beyond those NHDES areas of jurisdiction under RSA 162-H, but they also fail to acknowledge that the ‘Gosling Road transformer’ is not actually an alternative at all, is not before the SEC in the pending proceeding, and was long ago dismissed as a viable option.”
The SRP is on hold following a state board’s decision to indefinitely suspend its review. SEC Presiding Officer Evan Mulholland said relevant state agencies must finish reviewing a project before final permitting hearings can proceed. The town of Newington filed a partially assented-to motion for the SEC to consult with ISO-New England in consideration of the certificate of site and facility and is urging it to examine whether it could pursue the Gosling Road option.