Eversource upgrades to potentially ease power demands

Eversource will be adding additional conduits and poles around Dartmouth, which should help to prevent outages during future high-demand times. 

The two main roads that will be impacted are Gidley Town Road and Fisher Road, both of which will have conduit installed underground. Russells Mills Road is currently undergoing repairs and construction. 

After installing the conduits, a construction company chosen by the town will apply a temporary pavement patch before fully restoring the road. According to Eversource community relations representative Anothony Veilleux, the company will provide $24,300 toward a contractor, and $4,300 toward repaving. 

Many residents raised concerns that this project has already begun in Westport, and the contractors left the roads in much worse condition than anticipated. With Gidley Town Road recently being repaved, abutters were concerned how this would leave the state of the road. However, Dartmouth will be choosing a contractor that is up to town standards. 

As there is a moratorium in Dartmouth on winter construction, the company hopes to start in March should the weather permit. They hope to have the substation done prior to this.

There is currently no set timeline on the project, but it was a condition of approval from the Select Board that they provide a schedule and time frame. The abutters of this project will be notified of the schedule as well as prior to construction.  

The Board also added the conditions that Eversource must have the Department of Public Works make sure their trenching is up to town standards, watch for underground pipes, and the company must provide any additional apron work needed for the abutters. 

There are currently repairs to the circuit on Russells Mills Road that should prevent future outages from over demand. This will include new wires, switches and fuses with a tie-in breaking the circuit in two. 

“That will solve like, 70, 80% of the problem,” said Veilleux.

Currently, on high-demand days such as during heat waves, the substation on Pine Street in New Bedford can get to 150% capacity. The outages in early August were caused by underground faults.

This causes the fuses to pop, from the voltage demand. Typically, if one power station is over-demanded, the voltage request will transfer to another circuit. On high demand days, there is too much demand for the amount of circuits and power.

By breaking the circuit into multiple circuits on Russells Mills Road, there will be less demand on one and allow the company to split the voltage demand more. 

The repairs on Russells Mills Road should be done by the end of September. 

“[This] will help ease the load in … those underground fault situations,” said Veilleux. “The long-term fix is what we had just spoke about, is the upgrade to Fisher Road, and the two brand new conduits going underground on FIsher and Gidley Town.”