Eversource Boosts Five-Year Capex, Adds T&D Across New England

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--New England utility company Eversource Energy (NYSE:ES) (Hartford, Connecticut) is boosting its capital-spending plan for the coming five years while narrowing its focus onto its core electric and natural gas businesses, in an effort to improve reliability in rapidly developing areas of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Industrial Info is tracking more than $2 billion worth of active and proposed projects from Eversource, more than half of which is attributed to transmission and distribution (T&D) projects in Massachusetts.

Click on the image at right to see a graph detailing Eversource's active and proposed T&D projects, by U.S. state.

In a quarterly earnings-related presentation, Eversource introduced its five-year, $24.2 billion investment plan for 2025 to 2029, an increase of $2.1 billion, or about 10%, from its previous plan for 2024 to 2028. The company attributed most of the increase to replacements for aging transmission infrastructure and the development of new substations.

Late in January, Eversource broke ground on one of its most ambitious projects: the Greater Cambridge Energy Program (GCEP), which is designed to improve T&D capacity in the Boston-Cambridge area of Massachusetts through the "undergrounding" of lines and substations. New transmission lines will run from the proposed Kendall Square Underground Substation in Cambridge to various points in the two cities. Eversource says the project, if built as planned, would be the largest underground substation in the U.S., located 105 feet below the surface and totaling 35,000 square feet.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Power Project Database can learn more about the proposed GCEP substation in a detailed project report. The major underground lines running from the substation include:

• a three-mile line connecting to the Brighton Substation in Boston; see project report
• a 3.4-mile line connecting to the North Cambridge Substation in Cambridge; see project report
• a two-mile line connecting to the Somerville Substation in Somerville; see project report
• a one-mile line connecting to the Putnam Substation in Cambridge; see project report
• a one-mile line connecting to the East Cambridge Substation in Cambridge; see project report

Such T&D developments have become a priority for Eversource in recent months, as the utility has shed much of its non-core assets. In October, Eversource sold its 50% stake in the 132-megawatt (MW) South Fork Wind project and the 704-MW Revolution Wind project to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) (New York, New York), and in January, it announced it would sell Aquarion Water Company to a newly created public corporation in Connecticut. For more information on the wind divestments, see October 02, 2024, article - New England Utility Eversource Unloads Wind Energy Assets.

Other T&D projects in Massachusetts include the Sudbury-to-Hudson Transmission Reliability Project, which is in its final stages of development. The 8.9-mile, $80 million line will connect the two cities, both west of Boston, and include both overhead and underground segments. The company also is performing a $5 million upgrade to the Sudbury Substation, partly through new transformers. Subscribers can read detailed project reports on the new line and substation upgrades.

Another T&D project set to wrap up in the coming months is a $50 million replacement line from Campton to Tamworth, New Hampshire, running about 23 miles and connecting the Beebe River and White Lake substations. Eversource plans to replace the existing fiber-optic cables with optical ground wire, which helps to reduce outages, among other changes. Subscribers can learn more from a detailed project report.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's GMI Project and Plant databases can click here for a full list of detailed reports for projects mentioned in this article, and click here for a full list of related plant profiles.

Subscribers can click here for a full list of detailed reports for active and proposed projects from Eversource.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking more than 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 trillion (USD).