By John Barrella

MIDDLEBOROUGH — The Middleborough Gas & Electric Commission is set to vote Wednesday on a bid for switchgear assembly at the South Middleborough Substation, the latest step in a multi-year effort to bring a new electrical substation online in the southern end of town.

The vote is scheduled for the Commission’s 5 p.m. meeting Sept. 9 in the Select Board’s meeting room at 10 Nickerson Avenue.

The switchgear item — the equipment that houses the circuit breakers and protective controls used to safely route and isolate power at the substation — will be presented to the five-member board by an engineer identified on the agenda only as M. Barrett, representing PLM, Inc., the Marlborough-based electric power engineering firm MGED has retained to help design the project and manage its bidding process.

A new substation, not a repair job

The agenda item raises an obvious question for ratepayers: is this switchgear purchase meant to shore up aging infrastructure, or is it part of something bigger?

Public records point clearly to the latter. The South Middleborough Substation is not an existing facility getting new parts — it is an entirely new substation still under construction. The project has been active in ISO New England’s regional interconnection queue since September 2022, filed as a request to move electrical load from the existing Wareham Street substation to the new South Middleborough facility, with roughly 20 megawatts of capacity involved and a targeted completion date of July 2026.

Separately, MGED solicited sealed bids earlier this year for two power transformers for the same substation, with that solicitation posted in February and updated as recently as March.

Taken together, those filings indicate the switchgear bid before commissioners Wednesday is one piece of a broader capital build-out — new equipment for a new substation, rather than a like-for-like replacement of failing gear on the existing grid. Utilities typically pursue that kind of project either to relieve strain on an aging facility nearing capacity or to get ahead of anticipated growth in electricity demand.

MGED has not publicly detailed which factor is driving this project, or whether South Middleborough’s electric load — residential, commercial, or industrial — is projected to grow enough to justify a dedicated new substation. That distinction would be worth asking MGED’s general manager or PLM’s engineer directly, either at Wednesday’s meeting or in a follow-up records request, since the interconnection filings establish that new capacity is coming online but not why it’s needed.

Also on the agenda

The switchgear vote isn’t the only significant item before commissioners. The board is also expected to consider rescinding a previously awarded bid for an LNG trim heater and generator installation, and to formally accept a notification that General Manager Kenneth Stone’s contract has automatically extended under the terms of his existing agreement with the board.

Commissioners are also slated to begin scheduling executive session dates to negotiate a successor agreement with Stone, and to discuss which MGED personnel will assist in that negotiation — procedural steps that typically precede formal contract talks with a sitting general manager.

The meeting is open to the public.