Northeast Utilities Plans Upgrade to Northeast Simsbury Substation

The town's northeast substation is about to get a substantial upgrade from Northeast Utilities to improve the station's reliability.

At a Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday, the plans for an upgrade to a substation, located near the Dorset Crossing mixed use development project on Hopmeadow Street, were announced. Northeast Utilities plans to add a new transformer and additional lines to feed the substation.

The original plan was to use town-owned land for the improvement, but the need for an extension to Wolcott Road left town officials looking for another way to make the project happen.

First Selectmen Mary Glassman said the town was able to work with both Northeast Utilities and the Keystone Companies to solve the issue without further cost to taxpayers.

"We're very grateful to Tony Giorgio and his company for working with us to come up with a swap of land that would allow the transformer to be built and a road to go in," Glassman said.

In order for the town to accomplish the Wolcott Road extension project, a recommendation in the Route 10 Corridor Study to connect Wolcott Road to Hoskins Road, Northeast Utilities will need to relocate the substation.

The town plans to make an even .07 acre swap with Keystone to make the project happen, Glassman said Monday night.

"We'll deed equal amounts of land so that the Northeast Utilities improvements can be moved," Glassman said.

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Northeast Utilities will install a new transformer and install new lines to feed the substation from the west. Currently, the substation is only fed from North Bloomfield.

"Through normal planning processes we recognized that the northeast Simsbury substation up on Hopmeadow [Street] under certain demand conditions could not be as reliable as we like it to be," Northeast Utilities Municipal Relations and External Affairs coordinator Marcia Wellman said.

Wellman said the company is planning to build the substation improvements to the west of the original location.

The total project cost for Northeast Utilities is estimated to be between $9-11 million, Wellman said. The First Selectman's Report published on the town website on May 14 said the project would cost between $5-6 million.

The company will submit a petition to the Connecticut Siting Council in June once the town land swap is complete.