Northeast Utilities and its partner are a step closer to building a $1.1 billion transmission interconnection to deliver “green” electricity from Quebec, Canada, to northern New England, a regulatory filing shows.
After two years of talks, Hartford-based NU and minority joint venture partner NStar signed a 40-year deal for Canada’s Hydro-Quebec to use the partners’ proposed Northern Pass Transmission Line to route 1,200 megawatts of electricity generated from low-carbon sources, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
NU is the parent of Connecticut Light & Power, and a pair of electric utilities serving customers in western Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
NU estimates $830 million as its share of the cost to build the high-voltage transmission interconnection spanning the U.S.-Canadian border, starting in late 2012 or early 2013. Power would flow across the line starting in 2015, NU said.
By year end, the Northern Pass partners say they will ask federal energy regulators to formally approve the transmission agreement with Hydro-Quebec’s H.Q. Hydro Renewable Energy Inc. unit. They also intend to file for technical approval of the line project design with ISO-New England, which manages the regional power grid.
NU and NStar announced back in 2008 their intention to negotiate power-transmission rights with H.Q. Hydro.
NU owns 75 percent of the partnership and NStar the rest.
NU Chairman and CEO Charles W. Shivery has said before that the project, in addition to diversifying New England’s sources of power, could meet nearly a third of the region’s goal of reducing greenhouse gases.
