A company has proposed running a $3.8 billion power cable beneath waterways from Canada to Bridgeport, with the goal of providing renewable energy for the equivalent of more than 1.4 million homes in southern Connecticut and New York.
Transmission Developers Inc. is calling the project the Champlain-Hudson Power Express, and envisions using high-voltage direct-current lines carrying hydro- and wind-generated power, with the planned route running under Lake Champlain, the Hudson River and Long Island Sound.
In Connecticut, the company has hired the law firm Brown Rudnick to help it with the multiple agencies in the regulatory process, including the Connecticut Siting Council, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Energy Advisory Board.
Transmission Developers has its U.S. headquarters in Albany, N.Y., and is backed by Blackstone Group and BlackRock, both based in New York City.
CEO Donald Jessome previously worked for Albany-based Aquapower, which is aiming to create newfangled underground energy plants in the Northeast. A derivative of “pump storage” technology that sluices water from hilltop reservoirs to create electricity, the company”™s “Aquabank” plants are designed to do so by draining ground-level lagoon water into vertical shafts, plummeting the water nearly 2,000 feet down to underground turbines to create energy. When energy use is off-peak in nighttime hours, the water would be pumped back into the lagoon to be used anew the next day.
Aquapower”™s board of directors includes Keith Lord, a Weston resident who previously led the mergers advisory group at Lehman Brothers before leaving in 2005 to try his hand as a novelist.
In the case of Transmission Developers, Jessome is once again hewing to the storyline that waterways can help cut the cost of providing energy ”“ this time in the form of reduced capital costs to lay cable.
Aquapower is currently working to develop a lagoon-based power station at the site of the former Maine Yankee nuclear power plant in Wiscasset, Maine. Last fall, Transmission Developers announced plans to run a shorter cable from Wiscasset to the Boston area, similar to the Champlain-Hudson Power Express proposed for New York and Boston.
“One of the biggest challenges we face in the development of new renewable energy sources is safely and efficiently transporting that power from areas where it is created to markets where the power is most needed,” Jessome said, in a prepared statement. “New York and New England have growing energy demands that must be addressed and this project will help meet these needs with clean, renewable power. This project brings clean energy into the grid, while lowering prices for consumers.”
If approved by regulators, Transmission Developers Inc. would snake a 355-mile cable from Canada to Bridgeport, following Lake Champlain, the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. While the line would be principally placed underwater, it would be installed alongside existing rail routes in certain areas to avoid areas of the Hudson River that are being dredged for PCBs.
Transmission Developers also plans to minimize future environmental impact by using high-voltage, direct current line. Dubbed HVDC, such cables have small electromagnetic fields compared with the alternating-current cables preferred for shorter distances, and suffer little energy loss compared with their AC cousins, as well.
