Photo / Courtesy of CMP
Joe Purington
Updated: 56 min ago
CMP rolls out 5-year plan to invest up to $450 million, add hundreds of employees in Maine
Photo / Courtesy of Central Maine Power Co.
Central Maine Power Co. aims to run hundreds of miles of covered tree wire in rural Maine as part of a five-year investment plan unveiled Thursday and notified to the state's utilities regulator.
Central Maine Power Co. aims to add 400 Maine-based employees over the next five years including 200 new lineworkers to install, maintain and repair the electrical power lines damaged by extreme weather and invest hundreds of millions to upgrade and expand infrastructure.
The plan, subject to review by the state's utilities regulator, calls for investing between $400 million and $450 million, according to a spokesman for the Augusta-based company. If approved, the earliest the plan could be implemented would be mid-2026.
By adding more of its own lineworkers, CMP would be less reliant on expensive outside contractors for storm restoration. Other planned hires include customer service staff, engineers, project planners and digital services employees, the company announced Thursday.
“If we make smart investments now, we can lower what our customers will pay in the future, especially during extreme weather events,” Joe Purington, CMP’s president and CEO, said in Thursday's announcement. “In addition to more reliable power, it is clear that our customers want more financial certainty at a time when costs are rising.”
The utility, a subsidiary of Orange, Conn.-based Avangrid Inc. (NYSE: AGR), serves around 646,000 customers in central and southern regions. The five-year plan, notified to the Maine Public Utilities Commission, calls for expanded the grid in southern Maine to serve 200,000 more customers in that part of the state. Avangrid is owned by Spain-based Iberdrola SA.
Asked how CMP aims to staff up in a challenging hiring environment, the spokesman noted that the company has hired union skilled trades workers for decades.
In addition, a new high school line internship program launched this year has students from Somerset Career and Technical Center working alongside line crews all summer learning how to safely climb utility poles and operate bucket truck arms without touching electrical equipment. Avangrid pioneered the program in Connecticut in 2023.
"We've brought this program to Maine and are already receiving very positive feedback," the CMP spokesman said.
Planned upgrades
To reduce the number of customers who lose power during a weather event and lower the cost to restore power, the plan calls for expanding CMP’s danger tree program, upgrading substations, installing covered wire to protect power lines from tree damage and adding new technologies.
The move comes in the wake of four storms between 2022 and 2024 that rivaled that of the 1998 ice storm and a new record set by Mainers last month for the amount of energy used in a single day due to extreme heat, according to CMP.
“By proposing this five-year plan, we will put CMP on a structured path that will provide more cost stability on the part of your bill we control,” Purington said. “It will also allow our team to make the types of workforce and infrastructure investments needed to improve reliability and reduce the impact of extreme weather.”
The service upgrades include adding hundreds of miles of covered tree wire in rural Maine, replacing decades-old utility poles with thicker and stronger ones and installing additional smart technology. Some of those efforts have already begun, with CMP replacing more than 5,700 poles in 2025 and installing more than 200 automated smart technology devices onto the grid this year to give technicians the ability to restore power to customers within minutes.
CMP aims to install 2,500 of those devices over the next five years to “deliver the power of smart technology to more than 400,000 customers,” the company said.
Mainebiz web partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments