The Vermont Green Line is a proposed project that supporters say will bring 400 megawatts of renewable energy from northern New York to the southern New England utility market. Developers held an informational meeting with the public in Beekmantown last night.
The Vermont Green Line would run a high-voltage direct current power line beginning at a converter station near an existing wind farm in Beekmantown, New York. Six miles of cable will run across the town to Lake Champlain where it will be placed on the lakebed for 40 miles. The cables emerge in Vermont and run underground for 13 miles to another converter station in New Haven. The power would then be distributed to the New England power grid.
Anbaric and National Grid are partnering on the $600 million project.
An initial public session held in February laid out the project plans. Wednesday evening the public was invited to a more casual meeting with individual representatives.
National Grid Director of U.S. Business Development Joe Rossignoli says the goal is to earn the support of local residents. “There are stations here that provide the visuals of the project and the construction impacts and how the project will be designed underground as well as the lake and the environmental studies that we've done. We’ve found in Beekmantown, and other places too, that those are sort of the issues that people are most interested in.”
Dean Nephew and Jess Mundy were quizzing Anbaric Project Manager Bryan Sanderson about the route and how much wind power is needed for the project. “The original power source is going to be like a wind powered operation, is that correct?”
“Yeah. The states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island have actually put out a Request for Proposals for renewable energy and hydro electricity. So we’ve decided to try to tie in the area of great potential to the area that really needs the clean energy.”
“We do a little bit of solar work at home and stuff like that so we’re just looking at obviously a broader scale than powering up our chicken coops at the house. We're looking for something a little more long term. It’s interesting to see how everything would play out. It seems like a good source to also offset some of the cost basis for taxes in the area.”
Across the room, Linda Ziolo was concerned that the cable will run through a portion of Point au Roche State Park. She hoped to convince developers to change the route. “We don't want development of the park and we don't want the park impacted and we don't want the residential neighborhood impacted. And I propose that they reroute it going down the I-87 corridor and going to the ferry dock which is already industrial and commercial use, instead of going in and impacting neighborhoods and parks.”
TRC is the lead environmental consulting firm. Project Manager Scott Lundin describes the underwater cable installation process. “It's done using a device called a jet plow, effectively a blade that goes into the lake bed. It fluidizes the sediment which makes it semi liquid so that the cable can fall under its own weight, but the sediment stays within the trench. So it allows the cable to self-bury as the jet plow moves along. Once we get beyond 150 feet of water depth the intent is for the cable to be laid directly on the lake bed and allowed to sink under its own weight.”
Plattsburgh North Country Chamber President and Regional Economic Development Council Co-Chair Garry Douglas says the Vermont Green Line is important not only for the $160 million it will bring in construction development, but also in enhancing the region’s wind energy market. “We're taking advantage of the natural resource we have which is wind, in this case, to create green power that generates jobs and particularly tax benefits for property owners and particularly school property tax payers in this region here to serve an outside market and therefore bring money in. That's called exporting. It’s power that we want to sell outside the area and want to get to market and wouldn't want coming directly into our homes all by itself because our power rates would go up.”
The developers have filed initial permit applications with the New York State Public Service Commission and the Vermont Public Service Board.
If there are no complications construction is planned to begin in earnest in the spring 2018 and take about two and a half years.
