Remembering Matt LeClair

A dedicated lead engineer in substation design, our colleague Matt tragically lost his life in a car accident in December 2023. This story honors his valuable and lasting contributions to Eversource and the electric power industry.

Matt LeClair was an integral member of our engineering team who assessed the equipment and control systems at our substations across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire

With the frequency, unpredictability and severity of extreme weather including thunderstorms increasing, our team is working every day to fortify our electric system to withstand the worst of climate change. In addition to impacts like drought-stressed trees falling onto our power lines and intense heat waves straining the grid, our substations have been affected by an increase in the occurrence of lightning incidents that were previously a “worst-case” scenario with a 100-year probability. After lightning strikes caused surges that damaged equipment in substations in Western Massachusetts and South Boston within a three-year period, we assembled a team of engineers, supported by substation operating mechanics who respond to damage during storms, to assess the equipment and control systems at all the approximately 600 substations across our service territory in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Power transformer serving our customers in South Boston

What they discovered surprised not only the team—but also the experts who set the standards for the reliable operation of our high-voltage equipment. The heartbeat of our electric system, substations regulate the voltage of electricity as electrons buzz along their journey to safely and reliably power thousands of homes and businesses across our communities. Using modern computation technology to model changing weather patterns and their effects on the equipment in our substations, the team determined that the lightning incidents that affected our substations were not just isolated instances—they had become a lot more common.

“In our deep assessment, we found that the rigorous standards we adhered to didn’t account for climate change,” said our Manager of Protection and Controls Engineering Enmanuel Revi, who earned his electrical engineering degree from UMass Lowell and master’s degree in power systems engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “Some of our control systems equipment and design methodologies were developed in accordance with the weather of their time and needed to be upgraded to make them resilient to our new weather patterns.”

Enmanuel Revi

Our engineers got to work developing a plan to modernize our substation controls to exceed industry standards and help ensure that they could be available to protect our high voltage equipment from potential damage caused by the more intense and frequent lightning occurring with the changing climate.

“The most exciting part of this project was how our team used modern engineering tools to take a fresh look at how to simulate failure scenarios of our common legacy practices,” said Revi, who grew up in Lawrence and lives in Randolph. “We’ve been actively working since 2019 to evaluate enhancements and complete necessary upgrades at critical substations across the three states we serve, including replacing vintage control cables in our substations with cables that use enhanced shielding to protect and maintain the reliability of our high-voltage network. This is our new way of operating—we’ve set a new performance standard for every substation installation.”

Upgraded substation electronic protection system panel

In addition to upgrading our own substations, the engineering team shared their findings with industry regulators and they’re beginning to collaborate with other utilities that are exposed to more frequent and intense lightning in their service territories. Working to solve sophisticated challenges like this one is exactly what inspired Revi to pursue a career in engineering, which now encompasses more than 17 years of practice in power delivery and utility systems operation and design in New England.

“I’ve always enjoyed problem solving,” he said. “Everything we do at Eversource has an effect on folks day to day and we play an important role in supporting growth of our regional commerce. That’s the rewarding part of my job at Eversource—I get to use my abilities to develop ways to enhance the quality of life of our local communities.”