Game on, Eversource!

Ratepayer advocates of Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire file X-178 complaint with federal regulators

Ratepayer advocates from around New England have formally asked federal regulators to stop Eversource from spending nearly a half-billion dollars rebuilding a transmission line in northern New Hampshire without any meaningful scrutiny.

The Office of the Consumer Advocate and our counterparts in Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have joined a complaint filed on May 12 with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by the Maine Office of the Public Advocate, challenging Eversource’s plan to destroy, rebuild and expand its X-178 transmission line that runs from Campton to Whitefield in New Hampshire.

The complaint challenges Eversource’s classification of this massive undertaking as an “asset condition” project, which (under the region’s transmission tariff previously approved by FERC) allows a transmission owner to fix transmission facilities that are “damaged or destroyed” by restoring them to “substantially the same condition, character or use as existed before the damage or destruction.” The complaint notes that Eversource has been using damage to 41 transmission towers to justify replacing all 600 of the structures that comprise this 49-mile transmission line.

We do not allege that Eversource should be prohibited from rebuilding the X-178 line – only that someone, somewhere scrutinize the massive cost of this project and determine whether this money should be spent, prior to just dropping this cost straight into federally regulated transmission rates. The complaint asks FERC to rule that rebuilding the X-178 line would require the same thorough review, under the aegis of regional grid operator ISO New England, that new transmission facilities receive.

This would, in fact, comprise a new transmission facility. So Eversource is violating the Federal Power Act by unilaterally declaring its $500 million, X-178 demolish, rebuild, and expand project as simply an effort to fix what has been damaged or destroyed.

The FERC complaint arises against the backdrop of New Hampshire’s Site Evaluation Committee taking up the question of whether Eversource should receive permission under state law to destroy, rebuild and expand the transmission line. Eversource has launched an aggressive effort to keep both New Hampshire’s Consumer Advocate and Maine’s Public Advocate out of the state-law siting docket – arguing, among other things, that the ratepayer advocates’ only recourse is to complain to FERC.

Thanks for the suggestion, Eversource. Game on! Yes, as our friends at Eversource have noted, we have the right to complain to FERC that they are violating the transmission tariff approved under federal law, and that the resulting federally regulated transmission rates are unjust and unreasonable under the Federal Power Act. But we also have standing under New Hampshire law to participate in the state’s review of the need for the project and whether moving forward is consistent with the public interest in New Hampshire. So we await the SEC’s decision on our requested intervention in the face of fervent Eversource opposition. And, meanwhile, we and our regional counterparts have been busy working on our federal filing.

I do not understand why Eversource is so afraid of scrutinizing its plan to rebuild the X-178 line. We are not an implacable foe of this project. We are simply aware that Eversource has recently asked federal regulators to approve a lavish, 11.39 percent return on equity for its transmission investments – an amount so lucrative that Eversource has every incentive to spend with abandon. All we ask is that Eversource justify what it spends, before both federal and state authorities.

As New Hampshire’s Consumer Advocate I thank my counterparts in Maine for leading the way in complaining to FERC. Public Advocate Heather Sanborn and her team at the Maine Office of the Public Advocate deserve the thanks of ratepayers throughout New England, New Hampshire certainly included, for challenging a project whose costs Eversource intends to spread across the region. We are pleased to join the FERC complaint her office has filed.