Eversource, a New England-based energy provider, broke ground in Kendall Square on Tuesday on what will be the largest underground electrical substation in the United States.

The Greater Cambridge Energy Program, devised to establish necessary infrastructure 105 feet underground, will provide enough energy to replace 50 percent of the city’s commercial sector gas demand with electricity and electrify all of the city’s residential heating.

State Senator Sal N. DiDomenico, who attended Tuesday’s construction commencement celebration, said in an interview with The Crimson after the event that the substation is “critical” to Cambridge’s biotech development.

“We want to be a world leader in the life sciences and biotech, and we need infrastructure to make that happen,” he said. “The resiliency piece of it is an important part that no one sees.”

The project, which is a partnership between real estate investment company BXP, the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, and the city of Cambridge, will also build 115 kV worth of underground transmission lines that will span 8.3 miles — sending electricity into Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. GCEP will also add 420,000 square feet of affordable housing to BXP’s Life Sciences Center.

“The success of this project is rooted in the relationships and the partnerships that made it happen,” BXP Senior Vice President of Development Jeff Lowenberg said.

The project, however, did not come to fruition without complaint.

Initially, Eversource planned to build the substation above ground — a plan that was met with concerns by Cambridge residents. The city of Cambridge then requested that the company find a new site for the project.

“The plan was to put the substation on Fulkerson Street, really bordering the residential area,” said David Maher, president of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce. "It was just not the right place."

Major project here. They didn’t publish the cost for this project but I am willing to bet it had to increase at least 75% from doing an above ground substation. But this area is swimming in fiat. MIT and Harvard will be impacted and they tried to throw into the frey about how this product should go. But doing all this to replace natural gas heat for electrical heat seems like mal investment.