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Northern Pass Cleans up in Mass. RFP

By Michael Kuser

Eversource Energy and Hydro-Québec were the big — and only — winners in a solicitation to provide Massachusetts with 9.45 TWh of renewable energy each year, state officials revealed Thursday.

The selection of the companies’ joint Northern Pass transmission project means that an additional 1,090 MW of hydropower will be delivered into the New England grid via a new 192-mile HVDC line.

The project contains no provisions for delivering other forms of renewables and was the only one selected among a handful of proposals dominated by hydroelectric output from Québec. (See Hydro-Québec Dominates Mass. Clean Energy Bids.) A separate Eversource bid that included Canadian wind energy was not accepted.

Massachusetts issued its solicitation for a high volume of hydro and Class I renewables (wind, solar or energy storage) last July.

“We collaborated with the legislature to propose and sign the bipartisan energy legislation that enables today’s procurement, and we look forward to working with all stakeholders involved to ensure it delivers a cost-effective and reliable energy future that makes substantial progress in reducing our carbon emissions,” Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources worked with distribution utilities Eversource, National Grid and Unitil on the solicitation. Any contract awarded under the MA 83D request for proposals must be negotiated by March 27 and submitted to the state’s Department of Public Utilities by April 25.

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No Wind Today

Northern Pass’s win came one day after Maine Gov. Paul LePage imposed a moratorium on new wind energy projects in western and coastal Maine and set up a commission to study the effect of wind turbines on tourism. Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association, called the governor’s action “an attempt to thwart billions of dollars of investment that is looking at Maine,” according to the Portland Press Herald.

Chris O’Neil, a Portland-based consultant and former state representative who often lobbies for wind energy opponents in Maine’s capital, told RTO Insider that Massachusetts did the right thing by ignoring Maine wind in its search for clean energy.

“The RFP scoring is more favorable to dispatchable power that can guarantee 9.4 TWh … because the ISO-NE has lost and is losing some 5,000 MW of baseload and peak load generation,” O’Neil said. “Wind cannot perform these baseload and peak load functions. What New England needs is the good stuff. But the ISO-NE would do well to move forward with the other two HVDC projects also.”

He was referring to Maine-based Emera’s proposed Atlantic Link, a 375-mile submarine HVDC transmission line from New Brunswick to Plymouth, Mass., to deliver 5.69 TWh of clean energy per year; and National Grid and Citizens Energy’s Granite State Power Link, a 59-mile HVDC line from northern Vermont to New Hampshire that would deliver 1,200 MW of new wind power from Canada.

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Comment by Long Islander on February 4, 2018 at 3:15pm

EverPower's owner, Chinese bank partner on renewable energy investment fund

https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/energy/2012/10/everpowe...

 

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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