SOMERSET — SouthCoast Wind is fleshing out its plans for an electrical substation on Brayton Point, with construction in Somerset slated to begin in two years.

SouthCoast Wind, formerly known as Mayflower Wind, held an informational public meeting on Thursday to discuss their wind turbine project and the substation planned for Brayton Point. The meeting was standing room only, with around 50 people, mostly Somerset residents, crowding a room in Somerset’s Fairfield Inn & Suites.

The project, a joint venture of Shell Energy and Ocean Wind, will include a wind turbine farm about 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, in ocean it is leasing from the federal government. The project is set to produce enough energy to power one million homes.

“Folks from Provincetown, Massachusetts to Pittsfield, Massachusetts will benefit from this energy in their electrical bills,” Kelsey Perry, community liaison coordinator for SouthCoast Wind, said during Thursday's meeting.

For more than 50 years, Brayton Point was home to the Brayton Point Power Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in New England. The power plant shuttered in 2017, and two different projects connected to the growing wind energy industry are now planning to move in. Along with the planned SouthCoast Wind substation, a different company plans to build a 40-acre manufacturing plant on the peninsula that will produce undersea cables for wind energy projects.

Plans for the project

The SouthCoast Wind project will be split into two parts, one that plans to have energy it generates make landfall in Somerset, and another with plans to bring energy through a substation in Falmouth on Cape Cod.

Plans for the Falmouth substation are currently stalled, with SouthCoast Wind still exploring whether the existing energy grid there would be able to handle the switch to wind energy without major upgrades. Still, Perry stressed, the portion of the project that will run through Somerset is set to move ahead regardless of whether SouthCoast builds a substation in Falmouth or is forced to look elsewhere.

The cables destined for Somerset will travel along the ocean floor, cross underground through Portsmouth, R.I., then go through the water again before arriving in Somerset. The substation at Brayton Point will convert the power from direct current electricity to alternating current and connect it to National Grid’s power grid, which already has a grid hook-up at Brayton Point because of the former power station.

The converter station will be on 10 acres of the 300-acre Brayton Point. SouthCoast Wind is leasing the land from owner Brayton Point LLC.

Will SouthCoast Wind go the way of Commonwealth Wind?

The Commonwealth Wind project planned for near Martha’s Vineyard, a separate venture led by Avangrid Renewables, has run into financial hardship. Avangrid has said that the current plan for the project is “no longer viable” and that it plans to let its current contract with area utility companies expire and then attempt to rebid for new contracts. It has cited chain issues, rising costs tied to the war in Ukraine, inflation, rising interest rates and a growing interest in interest in offshore wind development globally as economic hindrances to the project.

Perry said during Thursday’s meeting that the economic issues impacting Commonwealth Wind have reached every offshore wind project. Still, unlike Commonwealth Wind, the groups behind SouthCoast Wind have not publicly declared their project to be economically unviable and currently intend to move ahead as planned.

“We’re having conversations. Things could shake out differently, but we’re looking to bring solutions to the table,” she said.

Traffic and noise impacts

Construction on the substation is currently scheduled to begin in 2025 and last two or three years. Two or four months of that will involve drilling to lay the cables, which representatives for SouthCoast said will be the loudest part of construction.

Perry said they anticipate a 7.5% increase in vehicular traffic in the area during construction, which is considered a low impact. Once the substation is completed, it will be unmanned except for occasional maintenance crews, so traffic impacts will be negligible.

Much of the substation, once completed, will be out of view for people in nearby residential areas, except for a thin, 80-foot-tall lightening pole.

Residents at the meeting, who spent years dealing with noise and other pollution from a scrap metal operation after decades of living next to the old power plant, raised concerns about the noise levels from construction. Construction is likely to overlap at times with construction on the cable manufacturing plant.

“It’s essentially depriving residents of two or four or however many years of their lives,” said resident Nicole McDonald.

Residents were concerned that the project will not abide by Somerset’s local bylaw around noise levels, which passed in 2021 and places a limit on "excessive or unwarranted noise." Under the bylaw, commercial operations must keep their sound levels below 70 decibels, while residential areas are limited to 65 decibels during the day and 55 at night.

SouthCoast Wind is still working through the process of getting the required permits and approvals from federal and state agencies. The project is seeking permission from the state to be exempt from Somerset’s local bylaws around things like noise levels and allowed uses for the land on Brayton Point, which does not currently include electrical substations for the wind industry.

In a petition to the state’s Department of Public Utilities, SouthCoast Wind said that “review standards by local boards are subjective and discretionary... This creates uncertainty that could cause delay, burden, or undue expense.”

Kelly Smith, Onshore Package Manager for SouthCoast Wind, said the loudest construction noise would likely reach 100 decibels without any mitigation efforts like temporary sound barriers, but that contractors will attempt keep the noise below that through mitigation. SouthCoast is attempting to figure out whether it would be possible to adhere to the noise bylaw while simultaneously seeking an exemption for it if needed, representatives for the project said.

“We’re not trying to bypass the noise bylaw,” Perry said. “(Seeking local exemptions) is a standard procedure that these projects go through.”

When construction is done and the substation is operational, residents might hear a low humming like a bee, if they hear anything at all, representatives said. Eric Frazer of SouthCoast Wind pointed out that a separate electrical substation is already in operation on Brayton Point and that the new one will be more modern and likely quieter.

“It’s gonna be extremely low and it’s gonna be probably no more different from what you hear today,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: SouthCoast Wind lays out plan for Brayton Point substation