ISO New England Asks FERC to Let It Review a $5 Billion Pipeline of Transmission Replacements
- FERC & Federal Policy & Markets Regulatory
Marin Holt
- 0
- 8 minutes read
- Asset condition spending through 2034: $5 billion
- Planned for 2027: $1.3 billion
- Share of annual utility capital projects: 73 percent
- Eversource New Hampshire project: $360 million
- Review would start: January 1, 2027
ISO New England went to federal regulators on August 17, 2026. It asked for permission to review the transmission replacement projects its member utilities pick for themselves. Those projects, filed under the label asset condition, carry roughly $5 billion of planned spending through 2034. About $1.3 billion of that lands in 2027. New England transmission owners choose and build them today with no independent check on need or cost.
Asset condition work now accounts for 73 percent of all annual transmission owner capital projects in the region. Transmission rates make up about 15 percent of a Connecticut electric bill.
What Actually Changed
ISO-NE would become the independent reviewer of asset condition projects starting January 1, 2027. The grid operator would examine each project for need and cost-effectiveness, then report its conclusions to stakeholders. Two stakeholder bodies endorsed the plan unanimously. They are the New England Power Pool Participants Committee and the Participating Transmission Owners Administrative Committee. The New England states asked for the change.
Today the utilities run this alone. The ISO-NE asset management page puts the duty on the utilities. They carry “an ongoing obligation to identify degraded assets and to implement necessary replacements or upgrades.” The grid operator publishes a process guide, hosts presentations to the Planning Advisory Committee, and collects an annual forecast. It does not judge the projects.
What Didn’t Change
ISO-NE still would not decide anything. The filing states the operator “will not make decisions about whether to proceed with specific asset condition projects.” Transmission owners keep the authority to build. Nothing in the proposal caps a project, sets a cost threshold, or requires a competitive solicitation. The review produces a report and a public record, not a veto.
Enforcement Reality
The teeth sit downstream, at FERC. Say ISO-NE publishes a finding that a project fails a need or cost test. States and consumer advocates then hold a citable document. They use it to challenge cost recovery in a rate proceeding. That is a slower and less certain path than blocking the project. It also arrives after the concrete is poured, because the review runs alongside construction rather than ahead of it.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, wants more than that. He filed a letter urging FERC to go further and introduced legislation that would force regulators to weigh affordability. “FERC must provide greater oversight over asset condition projects, including at a minimum, the establishment of an independent review mechanism,” he wrote. Critics keep returning to one Eversource Energy project in New Hampshire. It is priced near $360 million.
Why It Matters
Compliance officers and state advocates get a new document to point at, and a new date to plan around. Anyone contesting a New England transmission charge after January 1, 2027 should expect an ISO-NE review record to exist. Read it before the rate case, not during it.
The harder number is the 73 percent. Regional planning debate concentrates on the large competitive projects that ISO-NE already studies and solicits. Almost three quarters of the annual capital actually flows through the channel nobody reviewed. This filing puts a reviewer on that channel at last. It gives that reviewer no power to stop anything.
Critical Perspective
Read the vote before the proposal. The transmission owners being reviewed sit on the committees that endorsed the review, and both endorsed it unanimously. Parties rarely vote as one for a check with teeth. The filing explains why they could. ISO-NE will not decide whether a project proceeds. It cannot cap a cost, force a competitive solicitation, or stop construction.
The timing compounds it. The review starts January 1, 2027, in a year that already carries about $1.3 billion of planned asset condition work. Projects underway keep their current treatment. Oversight arrives after the spending curve, not ahead of it. That is the complaint the New England states raised about the Eversource New Hampshire project near $360 million. Nothing in this filing would have stopped that project either.
The enforcement path also shifts the cost of being right. A state or advocate wins a challenge in a rate case. By then the asset stands built and rate based. Ratepayers carry the financing in the meantime.
Blumenthal asked FERC for an independent review mechanism. New England is getting the independent half. The mechanism half depends on what FERC does with the docket. It also depends on whether anyone reads the reports.
Sources
- Utility Dive, ISO-NE to review ‘asset condition’ transmission projects under proposal filed at FERC
- ISO Newswire, ISO-NE files proposal with FERC to assume asset condition reviewer role
- ISO New England, Transmission Owner Asset Management
- Utility Dive, Eversource project ‘epitomizes’ flawed transmission reviews: New England states
