Eversource Grid Modernization Plan: $16.2B in Improvements

Some of the nearly 200 challenges captured from the Eversource plan in InnovationWorks

As part of its goals to confront climate change and reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has established the Clean Energy Climate Plan which was announced in September of 2024. Billed as an "ambitious roadmap designed to transform the region’s power grid", it intends to increase renewable energy production and electrify the heating and transportation sectors.

Here is a synopsis from the executive overview:

"The Electric Sector Modernization Plan (ESMP) lays out our vision for meeting these ambitious objectives by 2050 and includes the detailed steps we will take over the next five and ten years to ensure reliability and resiliency through the transition. Our 10-year plan helps achieve the Commonwealth’s decarbonization milestones through 2040 by achieving a 180% increase in electrification hosting capacity, which will provide additional capacity to enable 2.5 million electric vehicles statewide, 1 million residential heat pumps within the Company’s territory, and an incremental 2.2 GW of additional solar hosting capacity, which brings the total distributed energy resource (DER) hosting capacity systemwide to 5.8 GW. "

A total of $24.2 billion is planned to be invested from 2025-2029. InnovationForce ran the plan through our InnovationWorks AI to generate nearly 200 challenges in all areas touching the grid from generation and distribution to policy and workforce development.

Here are just a few of the challenges and the funding breakdown:

Distribution (Electric and Gas): Nearly $16.2B will be spent

• Facilitate the Use of Virtual Power Plant to support the use of customer-owned distributed energy resources (DER) as grid assets in order to address system constraints and defer system upgrades effectively.

• Addressing Rising Electric Demand Forecasts Impacting NWA Cost-Effectiveness to effectively manage the rising electric demand forecasts that are impacting the cost-effectiveness of Non-Wires Alternatives (NWAs) in order to ensure that NWAs can be deployed effectively to defer traditional solutions and maintain overall system reliability and cost-effectiveness.

  
  

Transmission (Electric): Nearly $6.8B will be spent

• Constraints on the Transmission System for DER Growth to aggregate load and DER capacity to the transmission level to identify constraints in order to ensure coordinated distribution and transmission solutions support load and DER growth.

• Enhance Grid Resilience and Storm Hardening to implement transmission upgrades to improve grid resilience and storm hardening in order to support and accelerate the siting of transmission projects essential for maintaining reliable energy delivery during adverse weather conditions.

Aging Infrastructure Replacement: Nearly $2B will be spent

• Upgrade Aging Distribution Infrastructure in EMA-North Boston to address the urgent need to upgrade the aging infrastructure of distribution substations and associated equipment in order to ensure reliable service and prevent outages.

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Substation Development: Nearly $1B will be spent

• Address the Bulk Substation Capacity Deficit by 2050: What you need: to address the remaining aggregated bulk substation capacity deficit of 2.6 to meet the 2050 Peak demand in order to ensure sufficient infrastructure is in place to support future demand and prevent service disruptions.

• Increase Transformer Capacity at Existing Substations in Cambridge: to increase transformer capacity at existing substations in the City of Cambridge North Cambridge area to support local distribution load in order to expand the station firm capacity supply by ~75 MW, enabling the deployment of 73,000 new EVs or the equivalent of 15,000 residential heat pumps in the service region.

Learn more by reading the full plan here or log-in to InnovationWorks to see the nearly 200 challenges we captured from our analysis of the plan.