Finally in Service, NECEC’s Effects Still Hotly Contested in New England

Controversy has followed the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) transmission line since its inception, when Massachusetts lawmakers debated legislation requiring the competitive procurement of 9.45 million MWh of clean energy in 2016.

After the law was passed, disagreements about how clean energy should be defined and what resources should be eligible for selection spilled into regulatory proceedings before the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU). How to treat existing resources was a hotly contested question, leading to technical and, at times, existential debates about the nature of decarbonization.

Joe LaRusso, manager of the clean grid program at the Acadia Center, argued that it is misleading to focus on non-firm, market-based transactions across other lines when assessing the performance of NECEC.

“NECEC is a contracted export-only transmission line,” he said. “Phase II is an import-export transmission line that’s been in place for a long time, and the transactions that are occurring today on Phase II — in a market sense — are not different in any way than the transactions that were taking place prior to NECEC’s commissioning.”

Illustrating the price-based dynamic, exports from New England to Québec via Phase II have occurred more frequently outside of evening peak periods, while imports have been more common during New England’s evening price spikes.

“The decisions that Hydro-Québec is making are essentially the same decisions that New York is making daily, and New England is making daily,” LaRusso said. “But what has manifested these questions is the fact that CHPE as well as NECEC are dedicated export-only lines, and so it makes the market transaction to import power over Phase II … seem more deliberate.”

He added that he expects New England’s net imports to rebound to the levels seen in 2022 or 2023, contradicting predictions that the power brought by the line will not be additive.

To read the full article from RTO Insider, click here.