PPH - New England Wind Farms' Efficiency Second Lowest in Nation
Wind industry: Tax breaks key
Credits due to expire unless Congress acts help stabilize the market for six Maine projects as they try to boost their output.
By Tux Turkel tturkel@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer
EXCERPTS:
The U.S. Department of Energy found that wind farms in New England operated at an average capacity of 28 percent in 2011, the second-lowest in the country...
"These things don't perform," said Brad Blake, a spokesman for the Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power. "The question is, why do we have such a poor public policy that panders to a special-interest group that can't make it on its own and can't compete economically?"
Blake has been calling attention to Maine's performance data, which comes from reports that operators file with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The 12-month figures were compiled for the Portland Press Herald by a financial analyst. The accuracy was confirmed by Boston-based First Wind, which owns four of the projects, and a former owner of the Record Hill wind farm, near Rumford. TransCanada Corp. didn't reply to questions about its Kibby Mountain project in western Maine.
The information shows that performance varied greatly by site and season. As a rule, Maine's wind farms generate the most power during the winter, less in the spring and fall, and the least in the summer. First Wind's project at Mars Hill in Aroostook County tallied a top capacity factor of 44 percent during the winter. On the other end of the scale, the Kibby Mountain project had a capacity factor of 14 percent during the summer months.
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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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