Results of New England Clean Energy RFP delayed
New England Clean Energy RFP delayed !
The trio of southern New England states looking to collectively buy more than 1GW of renewable power from places like Maine and Canada have delayed announcing the winning bidders, saying they need more evaluation time.
New England
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Last year three space-constrained states in the northeastern US – Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island – launched the so-called New England Clean Energy Request for Proposal, attracting more than 2GW worth of project bids in Maine alone from many of North America’s pre-eminent wind developers.
Developers had expected the winners to be notified in July or August. But the RFP’s evaluators issued a statement this week saying “additional time is needed” as a result of the “complexity of the analysis and the volume of bids”.
“We will continue to move the process forward as quickly as possible,” the statement says, with no new timeline given. “Final results of the RFP will be announced to the public when executed contracts are filed for regulatory review.”
Among the projects that were bid into the tri-state RFP is SunEdison’s 600MW King Pine in Maine’s Aroostook County, recently acquired by Pattern Development, which would be one the largest onshore wind farms on the continent, let alone the East Coast.
Other bidders include NextEra Energy, RES Americas, EDP Renewables, and Deepwater Wind, which is looking to branch out into onshore development.
The RFP could be worth as much as 1.5GW if all the capacity went to onshore wind, says Dave Wilby, who was until recently a vice president at SunEdison, and is now an independent consultant.
“In terms of past solicitations that have occurred relevant to the wind industry [in the northeast], this is the single biggest thing to come along,” Wilby told an industry conference last week.
The timing of the RFP may be complicated by the imminent announcement from Massachusetts of a state energy bill that is expected to include a large carve-out for offshore wind.
Wilby says it’s difficult to determine what impact the Massachusetts bill will have on the tri-state RFP, but “there will be some influence”.
The complexity of the RFP is increased by the fact that many of the projects that were bid in would require large transmission projects to go along with them.
Transmission constraints in Maine, in particular, may tip the northeastern renewables market towards offshore wind, an official at the region's grid operator has said.
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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(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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