The electric grid! Now this is a topic that does not appear often on “Top 10” lists for Lexington residents concerned about climate. Most of us would think first about the source of our electricity — whether it’s renewable, like wind and solar, or dirty, like coal or gas — not the poles and wires that carry it. But that very visible network that transmits energy is equally essential to getting to net zero carbon emissions.
As we transition to electric vehicles and heat pumps, we’re going to need a lot more electricity — nearly three times as much, according to a Boston Globe report. So it’s important to understand the infrastructure in place for distributing all that power.
Local interest in the transmission of electricity may be beginning to grow: LexCAN sponsored a community meeting earlier this year on how our clean energy future depends on fixing “the grid.” In the discussions on the police station solar canopies or the energy systems for the new high school, invariably someone mentions the role of Eversource, the company that owns and operates the electric grid here in Lexington. Another important reason to develop a better understanding is that Eversource’s charges for the grid make up about 50% of our monthly electric bills.
So what does Eversource do, exactly?
Eversource Energy (NYSE: ES) uses its grid infrastructure to transmit and distribute power to over 14,000 accounts in Lexington. It’s essentially a “middle-man” between power sources and the customer. The company has a stock market value of over $20 billion.
Eversource provides a number of services to Lexington customers:
· Billing and customer service: For most of us, the most common interaction we have with Eversource is to receive a monthly electric bill. Sometimes we react to the bill with a bit of shock if it is a hot summer requiring a lot of air conditioning or very cold if we use electric heating (such as heat pumps).
· Power outages: We dislike the disruptions when the lights go out. Eversource and its crews are responsible for restoring power.
· New home and building construction and renovation: Eversource needs to be in the loop for new buildings and homes to ensure electricity can be provided.
· Distribution planning, construction, and maintenance: Eversource, like most utilities, engages in very detailed planning to provide the infrastructure to keep the lights on safely. The goal is to provide reliable, resilient, and cost-effective power to customers. Growth in the use of electricity together with limited local generation resources represent planning challenges in Eastern Massachusetts.
· Transmission planning, construction, and maintenance: Eversource participates in separate New England-wide planning efforts to ensure there are sufficient transmission lines to bring power into the Boston-area. Siting in environmentally sensitive or congested areas represents big permitting and construction challenges.
· Interconnecting local distributed clean energy: One of the evolving areas is the process to connect local generation, such as solar power, to the grid. The process with Eversource may be simple (e.g., typically with solar panels on your home) but can be frustrating and complex for larger solar installations where Eversource believes it needs to upgrade its distribution system to enable interconnection. Lexington will need to work closely with Eversource for the large solar facilities intended for the new high school, for example.
You can see Eversource everywhere in Lexington, not just the poles, wires, and transformers outside your home. Eversource has five large substations in our community, including stations off Hartwell Avenue at the Composting Facility, off Marrett Road near Minuteman Tech, and downtown. Over 8 miles of high-voltage transmission line cross Lexington.
The utility business is a regulated business, since utilities are granted monopoly franchises to serve customers. In Massachusetts, Eversource’s electric distribution business is regulated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) which sets the prices that Eversource can charge customers. For 2022, Eversource earned about an 8% “return on equity” on its $11 billion utility investment in Eastern Massachusetts, a modest return but typical for the utility industry characterized by lower but very stable returns.
What do they need to do differently to meet our net zero aspirations?
Resilient Lexington, our town’s climate action and resilience plan, represents a bold and ambitious vision and guide that puts Lexington’s on a path to net zero. But Lexington will need a modernized electric grid to enable this vision. “Successful implementation of the plan depends on many external factors, including making sure utilities are upgrading the grid sufficiently to support electrification at the pace required to meet our local targets. We will need close collaboration with Eversource as we continue to encourage home electrification, EV adoption, and renewable energy,” said Maggie Peard, Lexington’s Sustainability & Resilience Officer.
Tomorrow’s grid will be much different, enabling significant growth in electric consumption while also allowing the integration of sizable amounts of renewable generation resources, such as from local solar power and even directly from vehicles. The grid will need to enable two-way flows of power to and from homes, businesses, and vehicles.
Eversource believes that electrification plans, such as those outlined in Resilient Lexington, will result in New England electric demand more than doubling by 2050 — and more than triple during the peak winter months. In contrast, New England electric demand growth has been relatively flat over the past decade.
In January 2024, each electric utility in the Commonwealth, including Eversource, submitted an Electric Sector Modernization Plan (ESMP) that outlines proposals to upgrade the distribution system, modernize the grid, and integrate more clean energy. The plans are important, but are not light summer reading: Eversource’s filing is 699 pages long.
Eversource’s plan includes Lexington data and issues, including information on:
· Distribution system capacity and reliability: The ESMP shows that Lexington already faces a deficiency in distribution capacity, even before more electrification. Eversource has taken temporary measures to help.
· Electric vehicles: The plan shows data on the current levels of electric vehicles and highlights expected growth throughout MA.
· New Burlington substation: The plan proposes a new substation in Burlington and related transmission lines to help alleviate these deficiencies impacting Lexington to improve reliability. Community outreach is already underway.
· Hosting capacity for local renewables: Eversource outlines its plans to increase its “hosting capacity” so the utility will have the ability to accept more solar and distributed generation into its system.
“In order to meet decarbonization goals and help customers fully realize the benefits of the unprecedented clean energy transition we’ve embarked upon together in Massachusetts, we must modernize our electric distribution system to increase capacity in support of the push to electrification, enhance reliability, and make the grid more resilient to the impacts of climate change,” said Eversource Vice President for System Planning Digaunto Chatterjee. “Eversource’s future plans will address matters critical to Resilient Lexington, including strengthening the distribution system to allow more electrification of homes and businesses, facilitating the greater adoption of electric vehicles, and enabling the growth of local solar resources.”
The future grid has reliability and cost challenges too
Most residents don’t want the lights to go out more frequently as we move forward with the energy transition. Recent nationwide research suggests that better reliability, especially to withstand severe weather, is the primary reason consumers want a modern grid.
We also need to address the issue of cost and impact on our electric bill for grid modernization. After reliability, research suggests that consumers next want cost savings from grid modernization, such as cheaper electricity and more stable bills. Ensuring more green electricity to power home electrification and EVs falls well down the list of consumer concerns with the grid, unless there is resulting cost savings. Politicians and regulators, including those in the Commonwealth, have also begun to think more about cost, especially how it impacts lower to moderate-income residents. Lexingtonians have said consistently and loudly that their priorities are climate focused rather than reliability or cost — we will see what happens.
Policy makers (as well as utilities) are loath to talk about the total cost of getting to net zero. Initial analysis suggests modest impact from these ESMP plans on your electric bill, adding about $5 per month. However, Eversource’s total expected capital spending to support the energy transition will be much greater. Eversource has ambitious spending plans encompassing “core” distribution and transmission spending, several other categories of spend (e.g., offshore wind transmission interconnection), as well as the spending under the ESMP. In its latest earnings presentation, Eversource suggests it will spend over $17 billion from 2024 to 2028 on its “core” electric businesses alone. We are only starting to ramp up spending to modernize the grid.
No one knows what the economics will ultimately be to get us to net zero. However, total cost pronouncements and bill impacts for grid modernization are hard to come by, and rarely released to the public.
In a rare example of transparency, the City of Los Angeles and its Department of Water & Power clumsily released a comprehensive analysis and bill impact estimates suggesting moving to a 100% renewable energy and electrification future would result in a doubling or tripling of electric bills. Ouch! One of the cost issues is the 80/20 rule: investment and resulting bill increases to get to say an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases may be reasonable, but getting that last 20% reduction may be very expensive, especially if you want to accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Hopefully future clean energy technology advances, together with AI, can bring us to a fossil-fuel free world with reasonable bills.
How can Lexington residents participate in shaping the future grid?
The electric grid may not be as exciting as education, housing, or even trees, but Lexington residents have shown they are climate-action focused. If residents are interested, there are multiple avenues for participating and voicing your opinion to help shape the future electric grid.
Residents can let the governor and legislators know you’re concerned. State Senator Michael Barrett, who represents large parts of Lexington, has been a driver of energy, climate and utility initiatives. He is the Senate Chair of the Legislature’s Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy.
Residents can participate directly during public comment periods in regulatory proceedings at the MA Department of Public Utilities. As I have witnessed over my career in energy and utilities, regulatory proceedings are often long, tedious, and frustrating. As an alternative, residents can consider following, contacting, or supporting one of the many organizations that “intervene” in utility regulatory proceedings. For example, both the Acadia Center and the Conservation Law Foundation are environmental and climate advocacy organizations. The Green Energy Consumers Alliance is an example of an organization representing low- and middle-income consumers. For a different point of view, if you work for a business, your company may be a member of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which tends to advocate for energy and climate legislation and regulation which will first and foremost lower electric rates in Massachusetts. Around Lexington, if you are participating in local governance, it may not hurt to ask, just for the fun of it, how the electric grid impacts a particular Town policy, initiative, or project!
Leave a comment