The goal of the system is to hold down the price of power by showing companies

It would be buried four feet beneath the bed of the Hudson, except along a stretch that is heavily contaminated with PCBs. There it would be buried underground. The developers reached a major milestone in February when they were joined by six New York State agencies, the City of Yonkers and two environmental groups in filing a proposal with the state Public Service Commission to allow construction. Con Ed had some remaining objections but dropped them last month.
Now a panel of administrative law judges from the Public Service Commission is preparing to make a recommendation on how the commission should rule. Because it would cross the United States border with General Hand dryer Suppliers, the transmission line would also require a permit from the State Department, just as the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline does. It would also needs permits from the Army Corps of Engineers.The backers, including the Blackstone Group, an investment firm, say the line would be privately financed and operate like a privately built toll road, with its revenue provided by the customers who pay to use it. They assert that this guarantees savings because companies like Con Ed that deliver electricity would choose it only if the combined power and delivery costs were cheaper than those of other China Hand Dryer Wholesalers.
But companies that generate electricity in the New York market say the cost quoted by the builders, $2.2 billion, is clearly too low for a 330-mile transmission line. Another company, Hudson Transmission Partners, is building a similar line that will run from Bergen County, N.J., to West 49th Street in Manhattan, a distance of just seven miles, at an estimated cost of $1 billion.Opponents say that when the engineering details of the line from Quebec are worked out, the price tag will undoubtedly soar.  The developers counter that New York State’s competitive electricity system will insulate customers from the cost of construction. Under that arcane and complicated system, Con Ed and other electricity retailers were required to sell their generating stations to third parties, and now buy the electricity in a computerized auction system.
The goal of the system is to hold down the price of power by showing companies that want to build generating stations that unless they can cheaply supply electricity, they will be priced out of the market.The companies that own the generators offer to supply electricity at a certain price, usually based on the cost of production; wholesale users like Con Ed offer to buy it, starting with the cheapest power. The last megawatt-hour that customers buy will be the most expensive, and it sets the price for every megawatt-hour used, no matter what the bid price was.