Avangrid sues NextEra, claiming it sabotaged power corridor through western Maine [Video]

Avangrid Inc., the parent company of Central Maine Power Co., has sued NextEra Energy in federal court, accusing the energy giant of causing more than $350 million in business damage as it tried to sabotage the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line project.

It’s the latest round in a yearslong legal dispute over the $1.5 billion line in western Maine intended to bring hydropower from Canada to the New England electric grid.

Avangrid, the Connecticut-based developer of the 145-mile transmission line, says in the lawsuit it filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, that NextEra has engaged in “anticompetitive, unfair and deceptive business practices to foreclose competition for the supply of wholesale electricity.”

NextEra has “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars from these illegal practices,” Avangrid said.

It accused NextEra of looking to “sabotage” Massachusetts’ clean energy transition through “sham litigation, sham and defective referenda, the use …