BOSTON – New England’s power grid should be able to handle electricity demand this summer, but the region will still need to import power from Canada, and “bottlenecks” are possible near Boston and in southwestern Connecticut, grid operators said on Monday.

“New England’s power supply this summer should be adequate to handle forecast demand,” said Stephen Whitley, vice president of ISO New England, the grid operator. “We have adequate supply to keep the lights on.”

Last summer, New England repeatedly broke records for electricity demand, stoking fears that New Englanders could suffer rolling blackouts like the ones in California that made national news.

The region’s power grid suffered numerous glitches last summer, including a transmission line failure in Stratford, Conn. that required an emergency power shipment under Long Island Sound to avert blackouts.

In another case, electricity bound from Maine to southern New England was bottled up when transmission lines became overloaded. Last August, when New England used a record 24,967 megawatts of electricity, there was enough power trapped in Maine to light up 150,000 homes. But that power couldn’t leave the state because the transmission tie line to New Hampshire and the rest of the power grid already was at full capacity.

Such bottlenecks drive up costs to consumers, because companies have to turn to more expensive outlets to buy electricity.

But the grid itself, which includes hundreds of generators and 8,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines, is in healthy shape, Whitley said Monday.

About 1,100 megawatts of generating capacity have been added across the region to the 28,000-megawatt regional grid since last year, and another 3,400 megawatts of capacity will be added this summer.

One megawatt is enough to fuel about 1,000 average homes. In New England, demand for power is typically highest in summer, when people switch on fans and air conditioners.

Whitley said despite the health of the overall system, little has been done since last year to rectify transmission “bottlenecks” near the two areas of highest demand – greater Boston and southwestern Connecticut.

Most of the new power plants being built are outside those areas, with the exception of a new Sithe Energies plant just north of Boston in Everett, and some of the transmission lines are so old they’re unfit for periods of high demand, Whitley said.

“We’re using the equivalent of old country roads to transmit electricity, when we should be using interstate highways,” he said.