PORTLAND — Facing aging power lines and poles, Emera Maine has started making its case to regulators for about $175 million in transmission projects over the next five years that stand to increase the transmission portion of power bills.
The batch of 32 projects in its latest five-year plan raised the eyebrows of regulators when filed in July, prompting them to open an investigation into the company’s transmission system maintenance, which began with an Oct. 8 workshop with regulators.
That workshop marked the beginning of the Maine Public Utilities Commission investigation into the transmission plan that it wrote stands to more than double the transmission portion of bills for customers in Emera Maine’s northern Aroostook County service area.
If completed as outlined, the projects would increase transmission costs by about 75 percent in its Bangor Hydro Electric service district, according to PUC staff.
The possibility of those costs prompted regulators to request more information on how Emera Maine plans and conducts maintenance.
“The focus of this investigation will be to examine how Emera Maine got to the point where such a large part of its transmission system would need to be rebuilt in such a short period of time,” the commission staff wrote in June.
Company officials said part of that forecast is driven by the age of some of its power lines. More than 50 percent of the approximately 350 miles of transmission lines in its northern Maine Public Service district are more than 40 years old, company officials said Thursday.
More than 60 percent of all proposed projects are driven primarily by age and condition in both the Maine Public Service and Bangor Hydro districts, company officials said Thursday.
The general inquiry into Emera Maine’s transmission maintenance comes as the utility faces specific questions about how it will address power needs in the region.
In late August, the PUC denied the company’s request to build a new utility line from Monticello to New Brunswick, proposing instead that it help upgrade Algonquin Power’s Tinker transformer in New Brunswick, from which it sources power for the Northern Maine grid.
Beyond the investigation of the company’s general system maintenance practices, the outcome of that Tinker upgrade and other projects could also affect the number of projects it estimates are needed in the next five years.
That includes the possibility that the company will find alternatives to the proposed transmission projects that don’t include new construction or transmission upgrades at all.
The company in May added executive-level positions focused on development of “smart grid” technologies and said in its five-year plan that it would seek to develop alternative solutions to power grid capacity needs for each of the projects in its five-year plan.
Separately, regulators plan to consider questions specific to the future of the independently operated Northern Maine grid in the second phase of Emera Maine’s denied request to build a new transmission line connecting with New Brunswick.
A PUC order in that case calls for Emera Maine to report back by Nov. 1 about its options for helping to fund the upgrade to Algonquin Power’s Tinker transformer to address grid reliability concerns in its northern territory.
