MANY MINDEDAn Underground Line From Quebec Is Already Carrying Clean Power Into New York
The Champlain Hudson Power Express began operating in May 2026, a 339-mile transmission line running from Quebec to Queens. It is described as the longest underground line in North America, built as two high-voltage direct-current cables each about five inches across, buried underground or under the Hudson River. On July 3, during a heat wave, New York imported 52 gigawatt-hours from Canada — roughly 9% of the state's demand that day. The line could eventually supply up to 20% of New York City's electricity.
The scale rests on Quebec's supply: over 99% of the province's power comes from renewables, mostly hydro. The project was built by Transmission Developers, owned by Blackstone, with Hydro-Québec, at a privately funded cost of $6 billion. Construction ran from late 2022 to early 2026, but permitting had begun in March 2010 — about fifteen years before power flowed.
A line like this moves clean electricity across regions that could not otherwise share it, easing grid constraints and displacing fossil generation in a dense demand center. That is directly relevant to keeping power available and affordable as summer peaks grow.
The caveats are real. The line suffered two outages — a converter trip on the Canadian side July 1, and a damaged US-side cable from July 4 — and remained down as of July 22, with repairs projected by the weekend. That estimate is a projection, not a confirmed fix. NYISO's planning did not assume CHPE would be available this summer, and Quebec's three-year drought could reduce future hydropower.
Source: MIT Tech Review