Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine
Wake up Maine, wake up Maine voters: The 'Hype Phase' Of Wind And Solar Is Over
Wednesday, Feb 04, 2026 - 05:00 PM
And many states, particularly those run by Democrats, have regulations in place that require or incentivize utilities to buy wind and solar power over gas, coal, and nuclear.
However, even in those states that favor them, wind and solar energy are running up against two major hurdles: reliability and cost.
There are also additional costs to build new distribution lines to transmit electricity from the often remote locations where wind and solar power are generated to end users in cities and towns.
“With so many of these projects, be they wind or solar, you have to either upgrade a transmission line or upgrade the local distribution system to put those assets on the grid, and those costs are never assigned to wind and solar,” Glahn said. “The wind and solar projects cause the transmission projects to be needed—and these are multi-billion dollar projects—but that cost all gets assigned, in this extremely bizarre twist, to resources that are running and that are useful.”
In Minnesota, the source that is running is usually nuclear power and natural gas, so the additional transmission costs are attributed to them, Glahn said.
“We put the thumb on the scale to make sure wind and solar pass some rudimentary cost-benefit analysis by just out and out cheating, and it’s super frustrating,” he said.
Please read the full excellent article at https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/why-hype-phase-wind-and-solar-over
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Dan McKay
Maine electricity comes from two markets that clash with each other to the disadvantage of the weary payers of utility bills.
Entangled within the traditional market where generators supply their output by a competitive bidding process is the politically underlying favored market where greedy developers and so-called " climate enlightened entrepreneurs" reap the benefits of the holy grail of government payouts. The " Chase out the natural gas and oil markets at any cost" crowd provides the engine to clear- cutting a path to "The Big, Beautiful, Renewable Sanctuary" or to the beleaugered electricity customer, "The Big, Budget-Crushing, Unaffordable Bill.
The train wreck is rapidly approaching as the Renewables locomotive speeds headlong towards the natural gas fueled locomotive. A train wreck of epic proportions because the outcome either means sputtering remains of a once magnificent human achievement of abundant energy or a lot of rusting, ineffective wind spinners and crippled solar boards and leaking batteries for disposal.
Renewables and natural gas have been compatible only because natural gas has taken on the role of backstopping the fickleness of wind and solar, but as the growth of renewables proceed, the continuous accelerating and deaccelerating of natural gas plants, just like a car, is getting expensive.
Penalizing natural gas plants with a carbon dioxide tax further drives up costs and the rapidly lowering caps on carbon dioxide emissions drives plants into early retirement, leaving the helpless renewables clutching to maintain battery levels and electric customers finding out that these batteries have become the resource of last resort, as the lights dim , the motors wind down and the heat pumps dribble out little warmth.
Remember the names of the people who allowed money, greed and a false narrative to bring down the quantity and quality of electricity at the expense of the suffering ratepayers. Do not let them go off quietly. Their noise is what is deafening the magnificent creativity of engineers, construction workers and the electricity system operators.
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yesterday