Beeline Update: $9M project construction in spring
Brian M Johnson
PLAINVILLE — Town Manager Michael Paulhus has provided an
update on the Beeline Trail, which will connect Plainville and New Britain, and
is set to begin construction next Spring.
Paulhus said the $9 million project will be entirely state
funded. Construction is expected to begin in Spring 2027, pending funding,
right of way acquisition and permits.
“A major trail and street improvement project is coming to
Plainville and it could change how people move through town,” he said. “It’s
called the Beeline Trail, a new east-west connector linking New Britain and
Plainville.”
The Beeline Trail, also known as the New Britain–Plainville
East–West Connector, will build a new road-separated, multi-use trail along
with streetscape and complete street improvements along East Main Street, Pine
Street and Woodford Avenue and White Oak Avenue.
“It also closes a critical gap linking the Beeline Trail
with the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail,” Paulhus said.
Town Council Chair Chris Wazorko said he is “very excited”
to see The Beeline Trail come to fruition. He said the town will benefit by
more people coming downtown and supporting local businesses. He said it will
piggyback on plans to renovate the former White Oak Construction building,
bringing 100+ apartments to the area as well.
“I am excited to work with the state to get this completed,”
he said.
Wazorko said the street improvements will include better
curbs and sight lines. He said E. Main and Pine Street will especially benefit
from this.
CT seeks new contracts for nuclear power, renewables
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental
Protection said Friday that it would begin seeking new contracts for
carbon-free electricity from large power generators, including the Millstone
Nuclear Power Station in Waterford.
The announcement marks the start of the agency’s latest
round of “grid
scale” clean energy procurement, which began in 2011.
Several years later, officials used that process to provide
a lifeline to Millstone after its owner threatened to shut the plant
down due to the difficulty of competing against lower-cost natural gas. As part
of a 10-year contract that expires in 2029, Connecticut
agreed to purchase half of Millstone’s output at the set price of $50 per
megawatt hour.
Like all the grid scale clean energy contracts, utility
customers pay a premium on Millstone’s power whenever it’s higher than the
wholesale cost of electricity — typically determined by the price of gas. But
when the cost of electricity rises above the contract price, customers receive
a credit on their bills.
In an interview, DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes said the
agency’s latest round of bidding “could write a new chapter for the future of
Millstone,” as well as the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in New
Hampshire.
“Energy market prices are higher,” Dykes said, referring to
the rising costs of
both natural gas and electricity in New England. The result, she said, is that
customers could get a better deal from nuclear and other forms of clean energy.
“Our context for this [request for proposals] is not
necessarily driven by trying to prevent a retirement, but instead we think that
there’s an opportunity through this RFP to potentially extend the hedging value
of signing on to a long-term contract for Millstone’s output at a lower price,
potentially than what we might see in the energy market and then providing that
revenue certainty that we know these nuclear facilities prefer.”
Millstone produces about one-third of all the electricity
generated in Connecticut, as well as the vast majority of the state’s
carbon-free power. The plant’s two reactors are licensed to continue
operating until 2035 and 2045, respectively, though its operators are
seeking an extension that will allow Millstone to run for several decades
beyond that.
The Millstone contract attracted scrutiny following a temporary spike in
electricity prices in 2024. But Dykes said the deal with the two nuclear power
plants together has saved utility customers $153 million over the last six
years.
Susan Adams, a spokeswoman for Millstone’s owner, Dominion
Energy, said in a statement Friday that company is reviewing DEEP’s latest
procurement request with the “goal” of submitting a bid.
“We recognize that several New England states have expressed
interest in participating, and DEEP has indicated it will coordinate bid
evaluation and selection with those states, though details on that process have
not yet been provided,” Adams said. “Importantly, Millstone’s existing power
purchase agreement remains in place.”
In addition to nuclear, Dykes said DEEP will also accept
proposals for solar, wind, energy storage, hydropower and associated
transmission projects.
In its latest round of clean-energy procurement announced in
December, the agency selected three solar projects in Connecticut and Vermont
with a total output of 67 megawatts. That round was expedited to take advantage
of federal tax credits that are being phased
out by the Trump administration.
Other projects that have been selected under DEEP’s previous
clean-energy procurement include the Revolution Wind farm
off the coast of Rhode Island.
The bidding process has also at times highlighted challenges
in the development of clean, affordable electricity. In order to be selected,
projects must be deemed to be in the best interest of utility customers and any
contracts to purchase power need to be reviewed and approved by the Public
Utilities Regulatory Authority.
In 2024, Connecticut passed
on selecting any new offshore wind projects after officials, including
Gov. Ned Lamont, raised concerns about the cost of the bids. Since then,
President Donald Trump’s efforts to halt offshore wind projects has dimmed
the outlook for that industry.
“There’s quite a bit of uncertainty around what
financing might look like,” for renewable energy projects, said Kate McAuliffe,
a senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center, a nonprofit research and
advocacy group focused on clean energy in the Northeast.
“I think that makes it even more imperative for the state to
move quickly on this,” she added. “Anything that [DEEP] can do to expedite the
process, whether that’s in permitting or approvals, to make sure that other
mature projects can go online, that’ll be really important. And then the
results that we see in response to this will be pretty illustrative of what the
industry is going to look like.”
The year’s grid scale energy procurement will also be the
first conducted under a new law requiring DEEP to coordinate with at least two
other New England states over agreements to buy nuclear power. The states may
also collaborate over non-nuclear, bids, though they are not required to do so.
Dykes said that Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine have all
expressed interest in participating.
Dykes said that DEEP will also consider projects that have
bid into a similar solicitation from Maine Public Utilities
Commission for the development of on-shore wind and transmission lines in the
northern parts of that state.
Lauren Savidge, the director of DEEP’s Office of Energy
Supply and Infrastructure, said that officials will begin evaluating bids this
spring, before announcing winners in the second quarter of this year. The
state’s electric utilities, Eversource and United Illuminating, will then enter
into negotiations with the winners before submitting any contracts for PURA
review by the end of this year.
Chuck Eves
On Saturday, Jan. 24, on one of the coldest days of winter,
we narrowly avoided what could have been a very serious event in the heart of
Bridgeport - one that UI has been trying to prevent for nearly three years now.
Just before dawn that morning, one of the transmission lines
that hangs above Interstate 95 and Metro-North Railroad snapped in the cold,
falling onto the interstate before landing on the train's power wires,
structures and facilities above Tracks 1, 2 and 4 of the railroad. Thankfully,
train operations on those tracks were halted before any trains could travel
through these areas and did not reopen until repairs were completed some nine
hours later, causing delays and impacting Metro-North riders.
But today, the project has been halted: not because of
concerns over reliability or safety, but because of politics. Politicians
intervened in the siting process, seeking a more expensive outcome with little
to no justification, when the favored project alternative would come at an
incremental cost of half a billion dollars on Connecticut customers'
electric bills.
Here's the reality: If we had been approved to make this
critical investment in accordance with our original Fairfield to Congress
application, the exact line that came down on Jan. 24 would have been replaced
months ago.
As long as Connecticut fails to enable UI to replace this
entire aging span of the transmission grid, there continues to be a risk of
this event repeating itself.
If and when it does happen again, I don't know if we'll be
so lucky as we were on Jan. 24. This time, the wire avoided landing on the
highway: there's no guarantee that would happen next time, which could have
major traffic implications, or worse.
If Metro-North had not detected the wire on their tracks, if
a train had been coming too quickly and had become entangled in the static
wire, it could have resulted in damage to the train and damage to the
transmission structure straddling the tracks and all the attached 115-kilovolt
wires.
All that to say, this was a close call. Far too close. And
it was entirely preventable.
The events of Jan. 24 make it crystal clear: the
60-plus-year-old transmission lines hanging on railroad catenaries built in
1912 must be replaced. Both electric reliability and public safety depend on
it. And surely safety matters more than politics.
We at UI cannot replace these lines on our own. As a
regulated company, we need the approval of the Siting Council to move forward
with our modernization plan.
Siting Council members have another chance: UI's Motion for
Reconsideration of their October denial of the project plan is due on Feb. 16.
I hope they see the Jan. 24 failure of this aging transmission infrastructure
as a wake-up call. It's time to put an end to the endless, mindless delays on
allowing us to make the system investments needed to ensure the safety and
resiliency of the transmission system.
For the entire state of Connecticut and 14 million
electricity customers across New England, it's time - past time - for the
Siting Council and state leaders to allow UI to move forward with these
essential investments.