New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) entered commercial operation on January 16, 2026. The DC transmission line carries up to 1,200 MW of Hydro-Quebec hydropower into Lewiston, Maine.

NECEC met its contracted deliveries whenever it ran, and Maine priced below the rest of ISO-NE on every summer day the line was in service. Over the summer, Maine's day-ahead four-hour top-bottom (TB4) spread averaged $28/MW-day below the RTO-wide average on 78 online days. In contrast, the 14 days where NECEC was offline averaged only $3/MW-day below.

Maine's lower TB4 spreads concentrated in July 2 and 3, the summer's two most volatile days, when imports suppressed prices in the peak hours that drove volatility across the rest of the RTO.

Key takeaways

• NECEC ran as contracted baseload, averaging 1,075 MW when excluding two outages. The line's recorded summer delivery of 2,019 GWh equaled 75% of Maine's consumption.
• Maine's day-ahead price averaged $7/MWh below the rest of ISO-NE when NECEC was online, against $1/MWh below when it was offline. Congestion behind the Maine-New Hampshire interface accounted for half the discount.
• Phase II, another line between Hydro-Quebec and ISO-NE, flipped from importing an average of 221 MW to being a net exporter. Quebec still delivered a net 910 MW to ISO-NE across its three ties, up 640 MW year over year.
• Maine's lower spreads were most apparent on July 2 and 3, the summer's two most volatile days, when scarcity lifted the other zones' spreads far more than Maine's. The two days ran $946/MW-day and $686/MW-day below the seven-zone average.

NECEC delivered its contracted flows whenever it was online

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NECEC is the newest of three Hydro-Quebec ties into New England. Phase II, a 2,000 MW line into Sandy Pond, Massachusetts, and the smaller Highgate tie into Vermont came decades earlier. Alongside New Brunswick and three New York connections, ISO-NE trades across seven external interfaces in total.

NECEC's imports averaged 915 MW across the summer, including outages. Excluding the 14 offline days, imports averaged 1,079 MW, within 1% of the contracted 1,090 MW. The hourly averages sat between 1,065 and 1,087 MW, representing consistent imports throughout the day. A day counts as online when NECEC's maximum hourly flow tops 300 MW, applicable to 78 of 92 summer days.