Highway energy corridor wanted for $2B project
Two international energy companies hope to take the state up on an offer to use Maine's major highway corridors to transmit electricity for a long-planned $2 billion energy project.
The Portland Press Herald reported that the Nova Scotia-based Emera Inc. and the British firm National Grid have submitted a letter of intent to the state's Energy Infrastructure Interagency Review Panel to use state-owned right-of-ways along I-95 and I-295 to transmit electricity.
The panel announced earlier this month that it would begin accepting those letters of intent.
The Northeast Energy Link proposal would build a 227-mile underground transmission line from Boston to various wind, hydro and other power sources in northern Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, the Press Herald reported.
The project is proposed jointly by Emera, which owns Bangor Hydro-Electric Co., and National Grid, which first announced interest in collaborating on a transmission-line project in 2008.
Since the 2008 proposal, Emera has closed on a $361 million deal to jointly own wind energy projects across the Northeast with Massachusetts-based wind power company First Wind, giving the company more generation resources to feed the proposed energy corridor.
The proposal states the line would have a capacity of 1,100 megawatts — equal to the output of a large nuclear or gas-fired power plant, the Press Herald reported — and that the companies say they have the resources and financing ability to support and operate the entire project.
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