The proposed Seacoast Reliability Project would stretch 13 miles from Madbury to Portsmouth. Photo: Eversource
Eversource Energy, a New England electric provider, filed an application for a Certificate of Site and Facility with the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee (SEC) for the company’s Seacoast Reliability Project, a proposed 115-kilovolt transmission line connecting substations in Madbury and Portsmouth.
According to Eversource, electric demand in portions of the NH Seacoast is growing at twice the rate of any other region in the state. The Independent System Operator of New England says the Seacoast area needs additional transmission capacity to match electric delivery with current demand.
Eversource’s proposed solution is an approximately 13-mile-long transmission line running through Madbury, Durham, Newington and Portsmouth. It would utilize a combination of overhead, underground and underwater line design.
Eversource says the cost of this transmission grid would be shared by all electric consumers in the region based on energy consumption. For NH, the share would be about 9 percent, costing the average residential customer in the state an additional $1 per year.
Before construction can begin, the project must receive a Certificate from the SEC, which has up to 14 months to review the application and determine whether to issue its approval.
Eversource completed an initial round of Public Information Sessions last year in advance of the SEC filing, and will host another round in Strafford and Rockingham Counties within 45 days of the SEC deeming the application to be complete. Additional public hearings will be hosted by the SEC within 90 days of that determination.
The earliest projected date the SEC would provide Eversource with approval would be in the first half of 2017, at which point construction would begin on the project. Pending SEC approval and adherence to Eversource’s timetable, the project has a slated in-service date of late 2018.
Current Issue - May 2024