Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
MILTON — Five years ago, an almost 500-ton truck clogged both lanes on Interstate 89. As the bright red behemoth traversed the highway, friends and family flocked to the University of Vermont for the 2021 graduation ceremony, hopefully dodging the inevitable traffic jam.
The catalyst for the convoy was an internal failure at an electric substation in Sand Bar State Park. Engineers at the Vermont Electric Power Company moved quickly to find the root of the issue. They reached into their back pocket to transport a replacement part from a facility 62 miles away.
The 12-hour journey across dirt roads, highways and city streets was no small feat, drawing large crowds who lined the guardrails to watch the transport pass.
“It looked like a parade,” said Shana Louiselle, communications manager at VELCO, the utility that oversees Vermont’s electrical grid.
Six months and $3.5 million later, the new part was put into service, and the substation was back in business.
The electric substation at Sand Bar State Park is a critical link for electricity traveling at high speeds from New York into the New England region. The influx of renewable energy generation in both New York and Vermont overworked the existing system.
Demand for energy is increasing, and VELCO’s needs are changing, said Louiselle, referring to the infrastructure upgrades the utility has been making over the years.
With an approximately $13 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2025, VELCO workers are tapping into a new set of technologies to protect their ratepayers from rising electricity costs.
On April 1, VELCO started upgrading an electric substation in Sand Bar State Park. Heavy construction is slated to begin on May 11.
The substation manages the change in voltage of electricity when it travels across electrical wires from the New England region to the New York region.
John Fiske, project manager at VELCO, said the new power electronic system will act like a traffic flow controller that automatically directs cars from one highway to another to avoid traffic jams. But instead of vehicles, the system will direct electric power from one line to another to prevent an overflow, Fiske said.
This project involves the installation of twelve SmartValves on the system at Sand Bar. The valves would help the process of moving electricity when certain lines are clogged with electric flow, transferring the flow to other free lines on the grid.
“It helps us move power across the system more intelligently, maximizing the use of existing assets rather than building more costly infrastructure,” said Louiselle in a statement to the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure on Oct. 30.
VELCO will be the first utility in Vermont to tap into this group of equipment, known more broadly as grid enhancing technologies.
“It is an emerging technology, and there aren’t many of them on the grid today,” Louiselle told Community News Service.
Rather than building entirely new electric lines or substations, the grid technologies use existing infrastructure. They can also bypass land-use requirements and long permitting processes, which makes the process cheaper and quicker, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.
Over the past decade, U.S. energy demand has increased, with transitions to electric heating and cars, widespread adoption of artificial intelligence and a move to increase domestic manufacturing. At the same time, the equipment used to facilitate electricity movement is starting to age out.
“VELCO was established in the 1950s, and over the course of those first 20 to 30 years, that’s really when we built the system,” Louiselle said.
VELCO has slowly replaced its aging infrastructure to account for the change in demand and provide longevity for the system. Some of the infrastructure is still in place today, and VELCO will continue to make those replacements.
Both Vermont and New York produce a significant amount of renewable energy, particularly when residents are at work and not using it. The excess energy can’t be stored and must be sent elsewhere. This causes fluctuating flow to the existing control system caused by the variability of sunlight and wind. The unpredictability wears down the parts.
“The coordinated and combined operation of (the old system and the new parts) will improve our ability to respond to flow variations caused by New York wind generation volatility,” said Hantz Présumé on behalf of VELCO in a testimony to the Public Utility Commission defending the purpose of the project.
The Milton substation upgrades are slated to finish in summer 2027.
Ted Bloch-Rubin, director of business development for Americas for Smart Wires Inc., said the upgrade is a “slam dunk project.”
“There is a whole lot that it can do, and people are just starting to scratch the surface,” he said. “Start with the crawl, and then eventually get to the walk and the run.”