By GREGORY ZELLER //
From our Innovate Italy bureau comes an international energy infrastructure-development agreement with electrifying potential for Long Island.
Terna USA – recently spun off of the Rome-based Terna Group, private operator of Italy’s national electricity grid – has signed a joint development agreement with French multinational investment benefit corporation Meridiam and Connecticut-based energy industry consultant Boundless Energy aimed at creating new U.S. business ventures in the electricity-transmission field.
Terna’s infrastructure experience, Meridiam’s financial focus and Boundless Energy’s long history with sustainable generation/transmission – plus its Eastern U.S. familiarity – will fuel a mission to cultivate “business opportunities connected to the acquisition, development and implementation of large onshore and offshore electricity-transmission infrastructure projects in the United States,” according to a Terna statement issued Monday.
The agreement is all kinds of good news for Long Island, where offshore electricity-transmission projects will play large in the coming years. Giacomo Donnini, the chief of major projects and international development for the Terna Group, offered an oceanic nod to the triumvirate’s East Coast links, noting Monday the partnership sees Terna “entering a market with attractive growth prospects.”
Giacomo Donnini: International lines.
Boundless Energy, of course, is quite familiar with that market and its prospects, including a comprehensive endeavor that already helps energize Long Island by sea.
The Connecticut company is the corporate successor to Tompkins Research and Management Consultants, which founder and CEO E. John Tompkins launched in 1986 as an early player in the renewable energy space – consulting independent power producers and major utilities on everything from cutting-edge clean-gen technologies to asset acquisition.
Boundless Energy now carries that baton, creating “development concepts” and otherwise supporting the ideation and formation of numerous electricity-grid enhancement efforts.
Among its technological ambitions: the Neptune Regional Transmission System, which is ultimately envisioned as a high-voltage direct-current submarine network running along the Northeast U.S. coast from the Mid-Atlantic to Maritime Canada.
As conceived by TR&MC 40 years ago, the RTS would capture surplus electricity generated during winter peaks in maritime regions (by natural gas and hydro-based sources) between Maine and southeastern Canada and transfer it to markets in Boston, Connecticut and New York, where electricity generation tends to peak in the summer.
Meanwhile, off-peak nuclear-generated electricity would flow north, allowing the “ponding” of the large hydro systems – a system that, by TR&MC’s calculations, would also smooth out seasonal customer price peaks across the layered regions.
Following Enron’s epic 2001 collapse, the Neptune RTS struggled to find footing – until 2007, when it partnered with the Long Island Power Authority to open its first undersea leg: a 67-mile segment connecting Sayville, NJ, and Nassau County.
Now operated by Neptune Regional Transmission System LLC, the $650 million expansion pumps 660 megawatts into Long Island’s local grid, about 20 percent of the region’s juice.
It also promises to be the vanguard of several in-development Neptune RTS “interconnection segments,” including legs connecting New England and the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, New Jersey and New York City, Maine and Boston and various other Northeast regions.
With Long Island continuing to establish itself as a focal point of the burgeoning national offshore-wind industry, new submarine interconnection segments and other energy-infrastructure upgrades – both offshore and on – will be paramount in these parts.
Partnering with an experienced domestic consultancy that knows the region and a multinational investor already boasting $18 billion worth of global assets (Meridiam recently facilitated the first-ever subsea electricity-transmission link between Germany and the U.K., among other high-profile projects) neatly places Terna USA right where it needs to be, according to Donnini.
“The signing of this agreement with Meridiam and Boundless Energy represents an important step in strengthening our international presence,” the Terna major-projects chief added. “Through partnership with two prominent and highly experienced players in the sector, Terna can pursue important business goals with a capital-light strategy, contributing to development of the U.S. electricity system and increasingly integrating energy generated from renewables such as solar and wind power.”
