New England states say Eversource's $360.6m line shows asset-condition reviews are broken

New England states say Eversource's $360.6m line shows asset-condition reviews are broken NESCOE told FERC that Eversource's X-178 project epitomizes a transmission review process that has waved through $6.5bn of lightly scrutinized spending since 2016. The New England States Committee on Electricity told federal energy regulators on Monday (2026-06-01) that Eversource Energy's $360.6 million X-178 transmission project in New Hampshire "epitomizes" the need to reform how the region reviews so-called asset condition work. NESCOE said New England "severely lacks" regulatory oversight of these projects.³ That matters because asset condition projects have become the dominant channel for transmission spending in New England, and they sit largely outside the competitive and regulatory scrutiny applied to other grid investment. The classification a utility chooses determines how hard anyone gets to look.³ The numbers explain why states are pushing. Since 2016, $6.5 billion in asset condition projects have been installed in New England, accounting for 55% of all transmission projects, according to NESCOE. That is the majority of regional grid spend flowing through the least-examined category.³ The pipeline looks more lopsided still. NESCOE said $5.5 billion of asset condition projects are planned, proposed or under construction, against just $281 million in regional projects. The ratio is roughly twenty to one in favor of the work that draws the least independent review.³ At the center of the complaint is the allegation that Eversource misclassified X-178 to avoid scrutiny. Ratepayer advocates contend the utility labeled the project to keep it out of the more rigorous regulatory track, a charge that, if it sticks, would put a question mark over how the broader $5.5 billion pipeline has been categorized.³ Eversource rejects the characterization. The company said X-178 has been "extensively reviewed" in the ISO-NE Planning Advisory Committee process, and that it followed ISO-NE's rules in planning the project. It argued the advocates failed to identify any rule it had actually violated.³ The utility leaned on the governing transmission operating agreement. "The TOA is clear: [Transmission owners] control the physical operation, repair, maintenance" of their assets, Eversource said, framing the classification as an engineering call that sits with the owner rather than with regulators or states.³ Eversource also pushed back on the suggestion it had padded the work. It rejected allegations it sought to "goldplate" the project, saying complainants "identify no evidence — nor can they — indicating that project scope, design, or timing was influenced by compensation considerations rather than engineering judgment." That is the crux of the dispute: whether the spend reflects need or incentive.³ For ratepayers, the distinction is not academic. Transmission owners earn a regulated return on capital they deploy, so the more that flows through a lightly reviewed category, the more states worry that the incentive to build outruns the discipline to justify it. NESCOE's filing is an attempt to force FERC to tighten that gate.³ The complaint also fits a wider pattern of pressure on utility grid spending. In North Carolina, a narrow complaint to FERC over Duke Energy's proactive grid upgrades carries implications that reach beyond the state, a reminder that how regulators define and police "proactive" or "asset condition" work is being contested on multiple fronts.² The timing sharpens the stakes. US regional grid operators have already asked FERC for an extension on a federal deadline to upgrade existing transmission and lift capacity, even as data center demand strains interconnection queues. More money is set to move through transmission, which makes the rules governing how it is classified and reviewed more consequential, not less.¹ What happens next runs through FERC. The commission will have to decide whether Eversource's reliance on the transmission operating agreement and the PAC process is enough, or whether the asset condition category needs structural reform of the kind NESCOE wants. A ruling that favors the states could reopen how billions in planned New England spending is classified.³ For now the signal to watch is whether FERC treats X-178 as a one-off dispute or as the test case the states are framing it to be. With $5.5 billion in asset condition work in the queue and barely $281 million in scrutinized regional projects beside it, the gap between the two categories is the real subject of the fight.³