Two of the power generating facilities at the Cape Cod Canal facility purchased by JERA, a joint venture of two Japanese utilities. (Photo courtesy of JERA)

DESPITE TERMINATED CONTRACTS caused by economic pressures, offshore wind in Massachusetts remains essential for achieving carbon-reduction goals. Escalating costs, most notably in upgrading onshore transmission to connect renewable power to the grid, have emerged as a difficult challenge for wind developers. To efficiently manage this multi-million-dollar hurdle, Massachusetts’ legacy energy infrastructure has a valuable new role to play.

The lack of existing options to connect to the grid is a fundamental hurdle, especially on Cape Cod, which is the nearest landing point for many proposed offshore wind projects. Developers have no choice but to spend hundreds of millions to upgrade onshore transmission and navigate an intricate process negotiating with town leaders regarding environmental and community benefits. Naturally, residents are concerned about bearing the brunt of the development, especially impacts on their beaches and coastal ecosystems.

But there’s a simple proposition that can expedite more affordable offshore wind: sharing existing infrastructure. It’s far more efficient, less environmentally intrusive, and a regulator-approved alternative to building new infrastructure. It’s the reason one offshore wind developer already plans to connect at Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, where a decommissioned power plant’s existing infrastructure gives the project an already established pathway to the grid.

Canal Generating Plant in Sandwich also holds significant promise as a conduit for offshore wind. The Canal plant still operates, providing backup power supply when the grid needs it most — on average, fewer than five days a year. This has important implications for electric customers in the Commonwealth. Standing idle more than 98 percent of the year, Canal’s under-utilized interconnection capacity of approximately 1,200 megawatts sits largely untapped.

Offshore wind could use the Canal plant’s underutilized capacity (known as Surplus Interconnection Service, or SIS).  In fact, that underutilized capacity is not limited to use with offshore wind generation and could be used to interconnect any clean energy generation or storage.

Canal could also continue to serve the grid when needed. It’s an approach allowed by both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and ISO-New England, the regional grid operator.

Unfortunately, the current language used in the Massachusetts request for proposals for offshore wind as well as those of other New England States discourages the practice of fully utilizing existing resources.  Instead, it requires new infrastructure to be built to provide incremental interconnection capacity. This approach takes longer, is more costly, has a greater impact on local communities, and is far more likely to encounter opposition. Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities has acknowledged the potential of SIS, but regulators have not yet endorsed it.

The cost savings from using existing infrastructure is considerable. Two recent studies, one by ISO-New England and another by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, indicate that incremental transmission upgrades could cost $400 million per 1,000 megawatts connected.  If Massachusetts allowed a 1,200 megawatt offshore wind project to use Canal’s under-utilized interconnection, customers could save hundreds of millions of dollars in clean energy procurement costs.

With SIS, there would be no need for costly additional system upgrades. Shared interconnection sites also have the benefit of shortening the regulatory process by avoiding the “in-the-queue” process that would require lengthy analysis.

Extensive studies aren’t required because the new resources will use the existing interconnection that has already been found to provide reliability benefits to the region.  And a site like Canal would avoid the difficult dynamics that come with landing transmission lines at beaches and running them through towns.

We urge regulators to accept SIS as a practical, ready-to-implement interconnection option and to require future solicitations, whether for renewable or other clean power solutions, to permit SIS as a qualifying option. 

This simple rethinking about transmission infrastructure would create an important new role for mature power plants like Canal, which could be reborn as agents of change in facilitating Massachusetts’ clean energy future while minimizing cost and disruption to communities.

John O’Brien is the chief operating officer of JERA Americas, which owns the Canal Generating Plant in Sandwich.