On June 1, with no ceremony and no visible trace above ground, electricity began flowing through a 339-mile cable buried beneath fields, lakes, and city streets—from Québec straight into New York City. The Champlain-Hudson Power Express, North America’s longest fully buried transmission line, had quietly crossed the finish line ahead of schedule.
Six billion dollars and years of planning went into threading this underground corridor from the Canadian border to a substation in Astoria, Queens. What drove it, and what it means for the city’s grid, is a longer story.
A record-breaking cable under the earth
The Champlain-Hudson Power Express stretches 339 miles and runs entirely underground — a combination that sets it apart from any other transmission line on the continent. No overhead towers, no visible pylons. The cable passes beneath fields, riverbeds, and city streets before reaching the New York Power Authority’s Astoria Annex substation in Queens, which was recently expanded to receive it.
The line carries 1,250 megawatts of direct current electricity from Hydro-Québec’s grid in Canada. From Astoria, a separate four-mile underground cable — the Astoria Rainey Cable — extends the connection into Con Edison’s distribution network, linking Canadian hydropower directly to the city’s everyday grid infrastructure.
Construction wrapped up ahead of schedule. Total cost: $6 billion, funded through the project’s developer, Transmission Developers Inc.
Filling the void left by Indian Point
To understand why this line matters, you have to go back to 2020 and 2021, when Indian Point Energy Center shut down its two reactor units. Together, they had generated roughly 2 gigawatts of carbon-free electricity that New York City depended on heavily.
What replaced that capacity was largely fossil fuels. According to an analysis by the Times Union, more than 90% of the lost generation was filled by gas-fired plants — a shift that pushed emissions upward across the downstate region, erasing years of progress on the city’s carbon footprint.
NYSERDA selected the Champlain-Hudson line in 2021 through a competitive solicitation, specifically to address that clean energy gap. It was a direct policy response to the fallout from Indian Point’s closure, and the politics around that closure have not entirely settled. The Trump administration has called for restarting the plant. Governor Kathy Hochul has rejected that approach, pointing to projects like Champlain-Hudson as the preferred path forward.
How much power New York City will actually receive
The numbers are significant. The line is expected to deliver 10.4 terawatt-hours of electricity per year—enough to meet up to 20% of New York City’s total electric demand. For a city of more than eight million people with an energy-intensive economy, that is a meaningful share.
Power flows began on June 1, the moment Hydro-Québec’s grid connected operationally to New York’s. There was no public event. The electricity simply started moving.
Transmission Developers Inc. developed the project; NYSERDA administered it through a formal bid process. That structure—a state energy authority selecting a private developer through competitive solicitation—reflects how large-scale clean energy infrastructure now typically gets built in New York.
What this means for regional grid reliability
The Champlain-Hudson line does not exist in isolation. Grid planners are watching a broader regional picture closely as summer 2026 approaches.
The Northeast Power Coordinating Council, which oversees reliability across New York, New England, and several Canadian provinces, noted last week that newly completed transmission projects—including Champlain-Hudson—have improved the outlook for the season. Under typical weather conditions, the region is expected to have adequate electricity supplies. That reassurance comes with a caveat, though. Under grid stress—extreme heat, unexpected outages, and higher-than-normal demand—some areas may still need emergency operating procedures and electricity imports from neighboring systems. No single project resolves every vulnerability in an interconnected grid.
Hydro-Québec’s president and CEO, Claudine Bouchard, framed the project in terms of that broader interconnection. “It highlights the growing role of interconnected transmission grids in enhancing system reliability and resilience,” she said.
Looking ahead
The Champlain-Hudson line is now a functioning piece of New York’s energy infrastructure, but its full significance will take time to measure. Whether it consistently delivers close to that 20% figure—and how it holds up during periods of peak summer demand—will be the real test.
As climate targets tighten and older fossil fuel plants age out, pressure to build more long-distance clean energy transmission will only grow. Champlain-Hudson offers a working model: buried, reliable, and already running.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
