PPH - Parent company of CMP hires Maine PUC commissioner who resigned

Carlisle McLean, one of the utility regulators criticized by Gov. LePage for approving rules to compensate solar energy producers, is now senior counsel at Avangrid.

http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/08/ex-puc-commissioner-takes-job...

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OK, let me see if I understand this. First we have ex-Gov Baldacci, the father of Maine's heinous expedited wind law in 2008 becoming vice-chair of Avangrid in December 2015. Avangrid is the nation's second largest wind company. Then a few months ago, Maine Energy office head Patrick Woodcock becomes asst secretary of energy in Massachusetts, a state whose crooked legislature has mandated its ratepayers buy extraordinarily costly wind power and where Avangrid company CMP is one of the companies hoping to make hundreds of millions of dollars building transmission in Maine for the unwitting Mass ratepayers who are about to get fleeced. And now a Maine PUC commissioner is moved into place at Avangrid. Are we seeing the requisite assets being moved into place for Massachusetts corrupt politicians' planned assault on the state of Maine? CMP is of course the company which with Gov Baldacci and his PUC chairman, Kurt Adams, nailed Maine ratepayers with the $1.4 BILLION "CPM Upgrade" (Maine Power Reliability Project or MPRP) which was a 100% ratepayer-funded gift to the wind industry so they could sell their electrons and REC's to southern New England. Of course the liars denied this and told us the lines were aging and population growth required new lines - both bald faced lies. And of course Kurt Adams, while still chair of the Maine PUC while the skids were being greased for this wind industry gift was given over $1 million in stock options by now defunct national embarrassment First Wind/SunEdison, for whom the freebie transmission was largely for. The next month Adams landed at First Wind as Director of Transmission. Folks, the media never will connect these dots, the legislature fails to protect us, the environmental groups are bought and paid for and will let Maine tourism be destroyed so long as no turbines show up in the front yards of their coastal properties and selectmen the state over will betray us. If we want to stop being treated as a third world country, it will be us that stops the insanity.

See: http://www.windtaskforce.org/page/corruption-in-maine-1  and follow the links once there.

BDN - Former LePage lawyer who quit as utilities regulator in June lands job at CMP parent company

Former Maine Public Utilities Commissioner Carlisle McLean in July began a senior legal job at Avangrid, the publicly traded parent company of Central Maine Power Co.

http://bangordailynews.com/2017/08/08/politics/former-lepage-lawyer...

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Comment by arthur qwenk on August 9, 2017 at 5:41pm

Shysters All!

Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 4:41pm
Wellinghoff Chair of FERC (later jumps on board with Solar City,&Tesla) jumps on board again with First Wind by granting a waiver to them. But, Wellinghoff doesn't sign this personally, either.

http://www.ppdlw.org/articles/ferc-waiver.pdf

It's not what you know. It's who you know!
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 4:29pm
Michael Jacobs of First Wind has it their way (transmission) with Jon Wellinghoff's FERC
But, Wellinghoff, curiously, is not who signed off for the FERC.
https://www.ferc.gov/whats-new/comm-meet/2012/051712/E-12.pdf
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 4:18pm
Michael Jacobs & Jon Wellinghoff FERC Chairman...didn't Wellinghoff also rule on First Wind?
http://www.coolerado.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/nrel.pdf
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 2:37pm
2017 Michael Jacobs-

Mike Jacobs
Lead on Electricity Markets and Regulatory Efforts
Union of Concerned Scientists
Participates in 1 Item
Mike Jacobs is the lead on Electricity Markets and Regulatory efforts in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) headquartered in Cambridge. He develops UCS policy to shape federal, regional and state electricity markets, regulation and policies to encourage demand-side and renewable energy resources in electricity markets and transmission planning. He has been directly involved in the interconnection of several hundred megawatts of wind and solar generation plants, as well as two battery storage facilities in Hawaii.
Prior to coming to UCS, Mr. Jacobs worked as the markets and policy director at a number of renewable energy and energy storage companies, and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). While with AWEA, he led settlement efforts at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to streamline generator interconnection rules for wind and small distributed generation. Most recently, Mr. Jacobs was part of the Electricity Storage Association Advocacy Council. Prior to this work, Mr. Jacobs was liaison from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to FERC. Mr. Jacobs began his career on the staff of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. He has served on the boards of Wind on the Wires, the Wind Coalition, Interwest Energy Alliance, Vineyard Power Co-operative and the Northern Maine Independent System Administrator.
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 2:31pm
Mike Jacobs Chairman of Vineyard Power, etc., transmission head... Can't copy-
See page 4 for Jacobs bio- and "read" the link "invasion" indeed!
http://ebcne.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/10-14-16-Final-Agenda-E...
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 2:21pm
Michael Jacobs, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., summed up conclusions from NREL's recently released study of wind expansion in the Eastern Interconnection grid. NREL found that 20 percent of generation could be produced by renewable energy in 2024 under several scenarios. But hitting that target would require as much as 17,000 to 22,700 miles of high-voltage "overlay" lines to be built, costing between $65 billion and $93 billion in 2009 dollars.

"There are no overwhelming technical showstoppers," Jacobs said. "But this is not going to come just because we ask. ... To do any of these scenarios it's absolutely necessary to have more transmission." Regional cooperation will be essential, he added.

Arthur Haubenstock, chief counsel of solar developer BrightSource Energy, agreed that the renewable goal is reachable. "We're not going to get there unless we build out transmission a lot more quickly," he added.
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 2:06pm
First Wind and the Maine Public Service Company

Last December, Mike Jacobs, vice president of transmission for First Wind in Newton, Mass., learned from the Maine Public Service Company that it could no longer accommodate all the generation from First Wind's Mars Hill wind farm in Aroostook County.

Consisting largely of wilderness, Aroostook is Maine's northernmost and largest county and borders Canada's province of New Brunswick on two sides. These geographic oddities partly explain MPS' unique distinction of having no direct connection as yet to the U.S. grid, although its system receives and exports power from and to Canada through three 69 or 138-kilovolt lines that terminate at substations across the border with New Brunswick.

From those peculiarities has followed a further eccentricity: Besides serving MPS' 37,000 customers, electricity generated at First Wind's 42-megawatt Mars Hill farm is sometimes exported to Canada on the three MPS lines, only to be imported back on other lines to power other parts of New England.

"The utility never had enough generation in its area before to cause it to run into physical limits for exporting," says Jacobs. "Now they were telling us that they would have to cap how much energy we could produce. We previously had firm reservations to export for most hours, and the new conditions caused a cut in our nonfirm transmission."

On Nonfirm Ground

Nonfirm service means that the generator has the right to use the transmission only if conditions allow and only for a short period. If the utility experiences some limiting factor, it has the right to immediately require the generator that has reserved nonfirm capacity to power down. But even though MPS had had a nonfirm contract with First Wind for a portion of its generation since 2006, MPS never had much reason to exercise its privilege before.

Jacobs decided to take a closer look at how MPS was applying the regulatory rules for determining its "reliability" or safety margin for dealing with an unanticipated loss of generation or transmission capacity.

In MPS' case, if one of its generators suddenly shut down, it would need to rely on imports from over the border. So it had been maintaining unused capacity along its incoming lines for just such a contingency. But now Jacobs thought that perhaps MPS, pressed up closer against capacity limits, was giving that contingency greater weight than the rules strictly required.

So he sat down with the operators of the utility for a brainstorming session. The first question they addressed was, "Should we be counting that reserve margin as if it was really filled or as filled only in the event of a contingency?" Jacobs recalls. And if it was counted only in a contingency, couldn't MPS then offer Mars Hill nonfirm service equal to that reserve?

Jacobs and MPS also began to focus on the reality that Mars Hill would be exporting out of the MPS footprint while MPS' emergency reliability margins were required only for flows into its footprint. "Our contract with MPS was to export out," reports Jacobs. "So if they had a loss of generation, physics would actually redirect our generation to supply it. Our electrons would not have to go out and then be reassigned to come back in, which would appear to create a double burden on the transmission line."

In the end, MPS became comfortable enough with this complex situation to provide nonfirm transmission service to Mars Hill -- no small accomplishment, considering that MPS answers to multiple regulators despite its tiny size. (It is part of the Northern Maritime Control Area operated by the New Brunswick System Operator, which in turn answers to the Northern Maine Independent System Administration, a FERC-approved entity).

First Wind and the New York Independent System Operator

In another instance, First Wind worked with the New York Independent System Operator to update rules on transmission cost sharing to reflect the realities of the rural grid. In this case a First Wind farm required an upgrade not to a transmission line but to antiquated substation protection equipment located in a rural area of upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region that had not seen new transmission investment in 34 years.

"It amounted to $3 million in charges that we were expected to pay, and we were flabbergasted," says Jacobs.

Although the NYISO had reformed its cost-sharing rule years ago to require all generators who use a new line to pay their share of transmission costs, the rule did not anticipate a situation in which not the actual lines but their controls needed to be upgraded.

"The ISO legal staff realized this was a shortcoming in the rules and extended them to cover electronic protection systems as well," Jacobs says. The fortunate outcome allowed First Wind to share the cost of the upgrade with two other wind farms that were seeking interconnection.

MPS, First Wind and NYISO are not the only entities that have found ways to massage rules and modify practice to make new things happen.
Comment by Barbara Durkin on August 8, 2017 at 1:38pm
Add:

Michael Jacobs, former Transmission VP at First Wind, and former utility analyst for the Mass. Dept. of Public Utilities. Jacobs is also the past Utility Integration (Sr. Engineer) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Until August 2012, Mike Jacobs served as the Director of Regulatory Affairs and Market Policy at Xtreme Power, the ‘Piginapoke for Hawaii Wind Farm’ Hawaii Free Press. Xtreme Power Director and First Wind Director is one in the same, Patrick Wood III. http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/main/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleTy...
The same month, Aug 28, 2012, Jacobs, who claims to have organized the First Wind demonstration of Xtreme Power's storage system in Hawaii, made a hasty exit, Hawaii Free Press reported: Kahuku Wind farm Catches Fire AGAIN, Battery Building Burns Down, Spews Lead all over Sacred ‘Aina
Look out California!
Mike Jacobs’ profile on Linkedin provides his current occupation as Technical and Strategic Consultant for Both Supply & Demand, LLC., Boston Area. His stint with Xtreme Power (‘Piginapoke’ molten lead) hasn’t deterred Mike from massaging regulations or regulators. He’s back in the game advising the California Public Utility Commission about energy storage procurement! And note that the undersecretary of MA while Bowles was Secretary of Energy being advised by First Wind has launched AMBRI energy storage as its CEO with a few million in state and fed grants.
Comment by Paula D Kelso on August 8, 2017 at 1:20pm

Dirigo, I lead, yeah, down the garden path to the tree with the poisoned fruit.

 

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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