By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
The town of Sutton is calling on Hydro-Quebec to consider new locations for a controversial hydro substation.
The Brome substation, which is expected to be built in 2027, will replace the existing Sutton and Knowlton substations and provide electricity to Sutton, Brome Lake and Cowansville. While its exact location has not been determined, Hydro-Québec has narrowed down the area under study to a swath of rural land near the boundaries of Brome Lake, Brome village and Sutton. In a statement in February, the town of Sutton said the chosen site “targets a particularly bucolic area where the presence of this substation, much larger than the previous ones, and new towers up to 45m high, risk disfiguring a landscape that makes our region so attractive.”
At the April 2 council meeting, Sutton councillors passed a resolution laying out the town’s own concerns about the project and setting the stage for an analysis of potential alternatives.
The resolution stated that the project was “oversized” in relation to realistic assumptions of growth in electrical demand in the region. “No other option to serve the municipality of Sutton has been studied in detail, nor evaluated according to technical, economic, environmental and financial criteria; [and] the justification for choosing a new 120 kV trunk line and substation can only be assessed by analyzing other options,” it said. “[T]he residents of Sutton, and in particular those of Sutton Junction, have expressed their concerns about the justification for the project and the location of Hydro-Québec’s proposed new substation.”
The town called on Hydro-Québec to limit the height of pylons and analyze alternatives including the addition of a transformer at the existing Cowansville or Coeur–du-Village substation, reinforcement or extension of the existing 49-kV line line; building a new 69-kV line; adding new batteries or capacitor banks; and developing the area’s solar energy potential, including with a proposed solar microgrid project “to improve community resilience, with solar panels on the roofs of municipal and commercial buildings to reduce pressure on energy demand and peak load management.”
“The solution that Hydro-Quebec is presenting to us is oversized, seven times current peak demand, and even when you add Knowlton, [demand] is still far inferior to the proposed capacity,” Mayor Robert Benoit said at the meeting. “We have no factories and we don’t have an industrial park and we don’t plan to have one. Growth in demand is driven by residences. We build 34 new residences per year on average, 340 over the next ten years – two or three additional megawatts per year. We can’t imagine that we will need an augmentation of 100 or 150 megawatts even over the next ten years, unless the town changes drastically.” He added that it was unlikely that there would be a major residential development in the next few years, due to social acceptability concerns and the strain on the water supply in the mountain sector.
Benoit said he doesn’t believe Hydro-Québec has studied all potential options for the substation. “I strongly recommend that they do that analysis to show us that this is the best choice.”
Although Brome Lake Mayor Richard Burcombe and Cowansville Mayor Sylvie Beauregard have also expressed objections to the proposed site, Benoit emphasized that the resolution did not intend to speak for any other municipality.
Benoit said the town was in constant communication with Hydro-Québec and intended to meet with the utility in the coming weeks. “The ball is in their court and I’m confident we’re going to find a solution,” he said.
Hydro-Québec was not available to comment at press time.