Maine May Benefit from Hydro Quebec Decision

This may take the pressure off Mainers to pay for a transmission line.  The only problem it is for hydro from Quebec and probably won't mix well with intermittent wind power.  Since we don't really need any more power, it might make the demand for wind from outside our state fall off.  Sure hope so.

http://news.mpbn.net/post/maine-may-benefit-hydro-quebec-decision 

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Comment by Kathy Sherman on September 1, 2015 at 7:16pm
I am afraid Maine will be paying for transmission, including what already went in for Maine Reliability Project, yet there is still congestion in Maine and incoming from New Brunswick. It sounds as if LePage wants the transmission to be built in Maine and I gather parts of New Hampshire don't want Northern Pass. I think there will be a lot of opposition to HQ from the likes of Conservation Law Foundation - they have numbers on methane created for the first few years after flooding for dam. Funny how urbanites don't object to reservoirs for their drinking water and the energy it takes to pump it to them or bottle it up to ship, then process the sewage and dump it out into our coastal waters.

I think the only effective argument against further build-up of wind factories in Maine is that for all that investment, wind energy was only contributing 31.1 MW to the ISO-NE grid at 6:30 PM this Sept. 1. That is pitiful compared to wood and waste; far less than current hydro or even coal, and this morning oil-fired generation came on. The price was high temporarily, but nothing like the wind generation gets from PTC and Massachusetts RECs.

Slightly off topic, but I was looking at some of the earliest projections of wind energy capacity from the early 90s by Elliott (i.e., prior to modelling by proprietary/aka commercial software), back when hubs were 30 m and wind speeds were classified at 50 m. Then only class IV and above was considered good. It was 2010 when they moved up to 80 m and now the vision is for rotors in the 140 m range and 120 m plus towers. But back then Maine with its greater land area could only contribute less than 0.2% of US electricity load in '91; the other New England states <0.1% each. That picture has not changed and that is what Senator Collins and everyone else needs to understand. Those larger and taller turbines make more noise and even if it takes pressure off ridgeline development, it will create havoc, and the visual impact including flicker and everything else gets worse too - weight, energy to build, area of land use that is not harmonious with natural tranquility or wildlife. It is cheaper for the developer because the cost per MW nameplate capacity decreases. So send them back to Kansas and the Dakotas that could have supposedly supplied a huge proportion of US load all along.

Utilities are now in the Big Transmission/Big pipeline business since deregulation took them out of generation. I wonder how Maine PUC will view whatever comes of Eversource-Quebec Hydro arrangement or if it is more up to FERC.

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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