new power line between quebec and new york is down again

a power line providing hydroelectricity to new york city from quebec is down for the second time this month.the champlain hudson power express (chpe) line was built to help new york city transition to clean energy and became operational in may. it experienced an outage on july 1 and a second, unrelated outage has been ongoing since july 4 and will likely last another two weeks, according to transmission developers inc., who partnered with hydro-québec on the project."teams working around the clock have identified a fault with the terrestrial cable at a location on the u.s. portion of the transmission line route," jen laird-white, senior vice-president of external affairs at transmission developers inc., said in an email. the 545-kilometre line — the longest fully-buried one in north america — runs from the canada-u.s. border to a converter station in queens.

laird-white said teams have begun repair work, which involves removing the damaged part of the line and replacing it."it is estimated that this repair plus the necessary post-repair testing will be completed within approximately two weeks," she said. "restoring service to the cable as quickly as possible remains a priority for all involved with the chpe project."hydro-québec spokesperson louis-olivier batty said the utility is collaborating with u.s. partners "to make sure everything is going well," but that ultimately, since the issue is on the u.s. portion of the line, it's "more in their hands." the $6-billion privately funded project was described in a june announcement marking its completion as "a historic milestone for new york state’s decarbonization goals and a blueprint for building large-scale clean energy infrastructure projects in the united states."the line is capable of supplying up to 20 per cent of new york city's electricity needs. the project intends to strengthen the energy grid as the city attempts to move away from fossil fuels and "is expected to provide an estimated carbon emission reduction equivalent to removing nearly half of the cars from new york city streets," the announcement said.normand mousseau, a physics professor at université de montréal and scientific director of the trottier energy institute at polytechnique montréal, suspects new york city's power supply won't be affected by the outage given that the line is so new."last summer, new york was able to meet its electricity needs — all the infrastructure is still in place, meaning the thermal power plants, the interconnections, the transmission lines to other sites, and so on," he said in an interview wednesday. mousseau added that it's not unusual for new lines to experience issues at the start."the equipment hasn’t really been fully tested yet, if you will," he said. "we saw this as well, for example, with muskrat falls and newfoundland and labrador. when that line was put into service a few years ago, there were some fluctuations and difficulties for a while, too."batty echoed those thoughts in a separate interview, pointing out that the lines involve "fairly complex pieces of equipment." "it is not unusual," he said. "that said, we prepare as much as possible to prevent it from happening." asked about potential revenue loss during the outage, batty pointed out that hydro-québec exports via other lines as well and that it can do so on the "spot market," which allows the utility to sell energy at a higher rate. "we maximize exports at times when prices are most attractive," he said, pointing out that while quebec has experienced bouts of hot weather over the past few weeks, representing an increase in demand for power, it hasn't yet experienced "major heat waves." "our first mission is quebec’s energy security," batty said. "so we maximize our exports, but we also make sure to keep the necessary margin to supply quebec, which is of course our primary customer." the chpe project involves a 25-year contract between hydro-québec and the new york state energy research and development authority. mousseau pointed out that quebec is facing a water shortage that occurs every 10-15 years and that demand for power has been exacerbated by the electrification of the province. "we are in a very tight situation in quebec, and since we have no need to export, (the outage) is not a major issue for hydro-québec," he said. "if anything, it’s the opposite."kthomas@postmedia.com