9/1/09 - Maine wind farm gets stimulus funds

Posted Sept. 01, 2009, at 9:36 p.m.
Last modified Jan. 30, 2011, at 12:13 p.m.
A Washington County industrial wind site was awarded $40.44 million of $502 million in federal stimulus money issued Tuesday in an unprecedented effort to spur private sector investments in clean energy and create new jobs nationwide.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that a 57-megawatt facility on Stetson Mountain in Danforth in northwestern Washington County is among 12 to benefit in a first round of grant awards from an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program.
“The Recovery Act is investing in our long-term energy needs while creating jobs in communities around the country,” Geithner said Tuesday. “This renewable energy program will spur the manufacture and development of clean energy in urban and rural America, allowing us to protect our environment, create good jobs and revitalize our nation’s economy.”
Operated by parent company First Wind of Massachusetts, the sole Maine project consists of 38 11/2-megawatt General Electric turbines, a substation, access roads and a 34.5-kilovolt collection system. As part of the project, a 38-mile transmission line was built to connect Stetson Mountain to the regional electricity grid.
The Stetson I project was eligible for stimulus funds because it came on line this year, said John Lamontagne, a spokesman for First Wind and its subsidiary, Evergreen Wind Power LLC.
The 12 selected projects are all now operational, said Tiffany Edwards, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy.
The federal grant effectively gives First Wind the benefits of tax credits that would have been spread over the life of the Stetson Mountain project, but instead provides those credits as upfront money.
“Our plan is to reinvest the funds so that we can accelerate the development of new renewable energy projects that will create jobs and increase the level of clean energy in this country,” Lamontagne said Tuesday.
Company officials have yet to decide which project will be funded, Lamontagne said.
The Recovery Act program is expected to provide more than $3 billion in financial support for clean energy projects by providing direct payments. These payments will support an estimated 5,000 biomass, solar, wind, and other renewable energy production facilities nationwide.
The first round of funding supports the creation of more than 2,000 jobs in the renewable energy industry — in construction and manufacturing — while moving the nation closer to meeting the Obama administration’s goal of doubling renewable energy generation in the next few years, according to the administration.
Anti-wind activists questioned why so much money was being lavished on windmills, which they describe — and wind activists concede — is an erratic source of energy, given the intermittent nature of wind and the lack of battery cells large enough to house the power they generate.
“One has to ask why energy sources such as wind need so much help if they are so viable an alternative,” said Eric Rosenbloom, president of National Wind Watch Inc. “Perhaps they are not so viable at all but rather just a politically popular symbol of a certain strain of ‘green’ thinking.
“Twenty years of grants and tax breaks haven’t worked yet,” Rosenbloom added, “so it is unlikely that this latest round will have any effect on our energy mix — but it will cause more wind energy facilities to be built, irreparably destroying yet more rural and wild areas of this country.”
First Wind has one operating wind farm in Maine besides Stetson — a 42-megawatt project at Mars Hill — and six projects in advanced or early development.
The six in development include Stetson II, a 25-megawatt project also located in Danforth; the 60-megawatt Rollins Mountain project on ridgelines in Burlington, Lee, Lincoln and Winn; a 55-megawatt project in Oakfield; and the 40-megawatt Longfellow project in Rumford. The locations of two other projects totaling 230 megawatts have yet to be announced.
First Wind also has 29 other projects in what the company terms early to advanced development, or under construction, in Canada, California, Hawaii, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming.
Three other First Wind projects, two in New York and one in Hawaii, already operate.
By leaving open the possibility that the federal money could go into projects outside Maine, Lamontagne’s statements conflicted somewhat with those from Maine’s federal legislators, who presumed the money would stay local.
“This money is going straight into the Maine economy to create jobs and stimulate business across the state,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree.
“First Wind is part of the growing clean energy industry in our state,” Pingree said. “It is an industry that is going to create new jobs and new sources of clean, renewable energy to Maine. I’m committed to helping develop this industry, and this grant is going to give those efforts a big boost.”
“Investment is critical if Maine is to become a leader in the development of wind power,” U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins said in a joint statement. “This funding will assist Evergreen Wind Power to tap this potential and will help create good-paying, clean energy jobs in Maine.”
Lamontagne hinted strongly that the grant would be expended in Maine, which he called “one of our priority states.”
nsambides@bangordailynews.net
794-8215
http://bangordailynews.com/2009/09/01/news/maine-wind-farm-gets-stimulus-funds/
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9/1/09 - 'Clean' Energy
The Treasury and Energy departments today announced $503 million in stimulus grants for "clean energy" projects. And while the energy may be clean, the politics may remind some of the soot belching from an old-fashioned smokestack.
Of the $503 million, $294 million went to a Spanish wind power company, Iberdrola SA, the Wall Street Journal reported. A quick search of the Federal Election Commission database shows the company's executives donated to the Obama campaign, with executives Brent Alderfer contributing $2000, Brent Beerley $1750, Eric Blank $2775, Jennifer Bradford $250, Melissa Erickson $250, Jon Fischer $250, Anders Glader $250, Kevin Helmich $250, Kevin Lynch $2300, Kourtney Nelson $450, Carolyn Plemons $250, Timothy Seck $250, and Peter Toomey $300 — a total of $11,325. An additional $10,250 from Iberdrola executives went to the "Obama Victory Fund," a joint fundraising committee allied with the Obama campaign.
Another about $115 million of the $503 million went to a company called First Wind, whose owners includethe Chicago-based Madison Dearborn Partners and a member of the D.E. Shaw group. This Bloombergarticle quotes President Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a congressman at the time the article was published, as saying of Madison Dearborn, "They've been not only supporters of mine, they're friends of mine." The Bloomberg article says, "Employees of Madison Dearborn have donated $77,500 to Emanuel's re-election committee since 2001, collectively emerging as the top contributor to his campaigns in his congressional career, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics." D.E. Shaw is the firm at which Mr. Obama's chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job. The Energy Department did not respond to a query from FutureOfCapitalism.com about whether Messrs. Emanuel or Summers had been involved in the decision to award the grant. The Journal did say that "Government officials said there was no cap on the program and that every qualifying application would be funded," though, as CIT could tell you, what constitutes a "qualifying" application is often the billion-dollar question in Washington. One company official, however, described the process of applying for the grants as "nondiscretionary," explaining that all firms whose applications met the terms of the law would receive funding.
The treasurer of Cohocton Wind Watch, a group that opposes one of the First Wind wind farms that received stimulus money, Judi Hall, said she has spent tens of thousands of her own dollars fighting against the placement of a 427-foot tall wind turbine 1567 feet from the front door of her home. "I feel like I was kicked in the stomach," she said. "I am so angry….It's just crazy."
A spokesman for First Wind, John Lamontagne, said that although the wind farms in Maine and New York for which his company received stimulus funds had already been completed, the money "will serve as a sort of stimulus for other, future projects."
"What these funds will do is help generate construction of projects and generate clean power," Mr. Lamontagne said. "This will have a significant positive impact."
In the Treasury Department press release, Secretary Timothy Geithner is quoted as saying, "This renewable energy program will spur the manufacture and development of clean energy in urban and rural America, allowing us to protect our environment, create good jobs and revitalize our nation's economy."
This all could be just the beginning. The Wall Street Journal reports that Iberdrola SA plans to collect as much as $2 billion in U.S. taxpayer aid, not bad for a Spanish company.
And if you question the wisdom of spending hundreds of millions of money from ordinary taxpayers to support operators of wind farms that have already been built with funds from rich investors — well, you may feel as if you are tilting at windmills.
http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2009/09/clean-energy
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9/3/09 - 'Clean' Energy, II
In my original post about the Obama administration's awarding of $503 million in "stimulus" funds for alternative energy projects, I wrote that the recipient of $294 million, Iberdrola SA, had executives who had donated more than $21,000 to the Obama campaign and related funds. Another $115 million in funds for windmills went to a company called First Wind, which, I noted, had owners that included D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners. Shaw is the firm at which President Obama's chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job, and Madison Dearborn is the firm of which Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, said, "They've been not only supporters of mine, they're friends of mine."
Today, I decided to check the Senate lobbying database to see if the companies had hired professional lobbyists to help reap their windmill windfalls. Sure enough, the plot thickens. Iberdrola hired two lobbying firms: Capitol Tax Partners, LLP, which it paid $100,000 in the first half of 2009, and Tonio Burgos & Associates, which it paid $10,000 in the first quarter of 2009. The disclosure forms say that Capitol Tax Partners lobbied the Treasury and Energy departments on tax incentives for wind energy as part of the stimulus act. The disclosure form lists seven lobbyists at Capitol Tax Partners, LLP: Lindsay Hooper, Jonathan Talisman, Richard Grafmeyer, Joseph Mikrut, William McKenney, Lawrence Willcox, and Christopher Javens. It identifies Mr. Talisman as a former assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, Mr. Grafmeyer as a former deputy chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Mr. Mikrut as a former tax legislative counsel of the U.S. Treasury, Mr. McKenney as a former staff director on the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Willcox as a former staff director of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, and Mr. Javens as a former tax counsel to Senator Charles Grassley, who is the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. A photo of the Capitol Tax crew and more information about them is here.
First Wind, for its part, paid $150,000 in the first 6 months of 2009 to lobbyists at the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP. Disclosure forms indicate the firm lobbied the Energy and Treasury departments on behalf of First Wind in relation to the stimulus law. Brownstein Hyatt listed four lobbyists working on the case: a former Treasury department official, Michael Levy; a former Energy department official, C. Kyle Simpson; Michael McAdams, and Norman Brownstein. Mr. Brownstein goes back so far in Democratic politics that a New York Times article back in 1996 was already describing him as a "longtime Gore friend." This release from the Campaign Finance Institute reports that Mr. Brownstein pledged to raise $1 million for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver at which Mr. Obama was nominated, over and above Mr. Brownstein's law firm partner Steven Farber's efforts as a co-chairman of the convention host committee.
First Wind also paid $75,000 in the first half of 2009 to a Boston-based lobbying firm, Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications. Rasky Baerlein's filings indicate it lobbied Congress rather than the administration. The firm listed a total of five staff members assigned to the project: Mike Gorman, George Cronin, Jeff Terrey, David Tamasi, and Emily Gombar. Mr. Cronin, the firm's Web site says, was "a senior advisor and New England political director for US Sen. Joseph Biden's 2008 Presidential campaign." The firm's namesake, Larry Rasky, took a leave from the firm in 2007 "to join the "Biden for President" campaign as its communications director. He previously served as press secretary for U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden's 1988 presidential bid," according to the firm's Web site, which notes Mr. Rasky was also "deputy press secretary for President Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign in 1980."
Many of these lobbyists have extensive records of their own of political campaign contributions.
All of this raises some interesting questions for the Obama administration:
If this administration is about "change," why would firms seeking to influence the administration hire such old-time players as Mr. Brownstein and the firm of Mr. Rasky?
On March 20, President Obama issued a memo stating "The Recovery Act is designed to stimulate the economy through measures that, among other things, modernize the Nation's infrastructure, jump start American energy independence, expand high-quality educational opportunities, preserve and improve access to affordable health care, provide middle-class tax relief, and protect those in greatest need. It is not intended to fund projects for special interests." The memo went on: "An executive department or agency official shall not consider the view of a lobbyist registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, 2 U.S.C. 1601 et seq., concerning particular projects, applications, or applicants for funding under the Recovery Act unless such views are in writing."
The memo also says, "All written communications from a registered lobbyist concerning the commitment, obligation, or expenditure of funds under the Recovery Act for particular projects, applications, or applicants shall be posted publicly by the receiving agency or governmental entity on its recovery website within 3 business days after receipt of such communication."
In other words, the Obama administration's stated policy is that lobbyists can't talk to the executive branch about applications for stimulus funding unless the communications are in writing, and that in that case, the communications must be immediately posted to the agency Web site. The lobbying reports for the second quarter for both Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP and for Capitol Tax Partners, LLP indicate that the Treasury and Energy Departments were lobbied in relation to the stimulus act. But neither the Treasury nor the Energy Web sites contain documentation of any communications from the two lobbying firms. What accounts for the discrepancy?
When President Obama announced his memo, he spoke of what he called "a fundamental commitment." He said, "Decisions about how Recovery Act dollars are spent will be based on the merits. Let me repeat that: Decisions about how Recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists. Any lobbyist who wants to talk with a member of my administration about a particular Recovery Act project will have to submit their thoughts in writing, and we will post it on the Internet for all to see. If any member of my administration does meet with a lobbyist about a Recovery Act project, every American will be able to go online and see what that meeting was about. These are unprecedented restrictions that will help ensure that lobbyists don't stand in the way of our recovery."
If these funds are being awarded "on the merits" and not "as a way of doing favors for lobbyists," why are presumably rational business owners paying lobbyists hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to lobby for them?
FutureOfCapitalism.com will be seeking answers to these questions from some of the relevant players in the coming days.
It's worth noting, too, that Mr. Obama's stated goal of transparency in the spending of the stimulus money has fallen far by the wayside. The joint Treasury and Energy Department release announcing the $503 million in alternative energy funds includes neither the words "First Wind" or "Iberdrola." It does include the mysterious entities "Canadaigua Power Partners, LLC" and "Canadaigua Power Partners II, LLC." Google them, and you find documents indicating they are subsidiaries of UPC Wind, which changed its name in May to First Wind. Search on the Obama administration's "Recovery.gov" Web site for First Wind or Iberdrola, and nothing comes up. Remember, this isn't some $30,000 pothole repair; it's hundreds of millions of dollars.
But to make this a story only about the Obama administration's failure to live up to the admirably high standards it set for itself would be missing the larger point. When government gets involved in redistributing money, or in picking winners and losers in the economy, whether it is in the energy sector or anywhere else, one of the consequences inevitably is the empowerment of lobbyists, either former campaign officials or former government officials and campaign fundraisers and donors, in a way that breeds cynicism that is incredibly destructive to democracy. It is the sort of thing that causes wise people to describe our economic system as not capitalism but protektzia, or to think of government, whether it is in Albany or in Washington, as a kind of vending machine into which interest groups pour campaign contributions and lobbying fees and get back taxpayer money in exchange.
What's remarkable, too, is how little attention this particular episode has gotten. Much of the press corps is in thrall to Mr. Obama and the rest is occupied with matters such as the death of Michael Jackson. The Republican politicians don't control a congressional committee that might hold an oversight hearing. The Republicans themselves are plenty complicit; the lobbyists at Capitol Tax Partners include a number of Republicans, and Mr. Brownstein's team at Brownstein Hyatt includes a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a firm spending money to lobby for its interests in Washington. It's as American as apple pie, and it's expressly protected in the First Amendment rights to speech and petition. But when the owners of First Wind — D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn — spend $225,000 in six months to lobby Washington and get back $115 million in money, that $115 million is wrested from lots of little taxpayers who don't each have $225,000 at their disposal to hire lobbyists to protect their interests in Washington. Those taxpayers were the people Mr. Obama was addressing when he said "Decisions about how Recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists." It's hard to imagine all those little taxpayers aren't going to be disappointed when they learn what happened to their hard-earned money.
http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2009/09/clean-energy-ii
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9/11/09 - U.S. Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) calls upon President Obama to revoke First Wind stimulus gift
The scathing letter is here:
Massa_USRep_DNY__letter_to_Obama.pdf
11/15/09 - Ex-partner of Boston wind exec charged
Sunday, November 15, 2009 11:53 AM
(Source: Boston Herald)

By Christine McConville, Boston Herald
Nov. 15--The Massachusetts native who helped found controversial wind-energy developers Cape Wind and First Wind expressed surprise late last week at news that his one-time partner in a separate wind-energy company in Italy has been arrested and charged with fraud.
"I read about it in the papers, and I was very surprised," Brian Caffyn said from Hong Kong, where he is now building wind-energy farms in China and the Philipines.
"I know of no fraud with (former partners) Oreste (Vigorito) and IVPC," said Caffyn, a Cape Cod native and Babson College graduate.
IVPC is Italian Vento Power Corp., a company that Caffyn, 50, once owned with Vigorito, a well-known Italian soccer club president. The pair worked together for seven years in Italy and even lived next door to each other for a time.
Last week, the Italian finance police arrested Vigorito, his Sicilian business associate Vito Nicastri and two others, according to the Financial Times. Eleven others were charged in a probe dubbed "Gone with the Wind" that began in 2007, the Financial Times said.
The group is accused of committing fraud by obtaining millions in public subsidies to build wind farms that either never worked properly or did not supply the promised amounts of energy, the Financial Times reported.
Vigorito has no connection to Cape Wind or First Wind.
Caffyn, who has amassed a fortune starting wind-energy companies, sold his interest in Cape Wind in 2002. He sold his interest in IVPC in 2005, according to First Wind spokesman John Lamontagne. Caffyn remains a shareholder and director with First Wind, Lamontagne wrote in an e-mail statement.
Last February, as part of a parallel probe, Italy's anti-Mafia police arrested eight others, including an alleged Mafia boss, and accused them of corruption in a wind farm project, the Financial Times reported.
According to corporate filings, Caffyn was a founding partner in Cape Wind, the wind-energy turbine project slated for Nantucket Sound. He went on to establish UPC Wind Management LLC, now known as First Wind.
In the United States, where the Department of Energy has recently set aside $100 billion in cash grants for the clean-energy sector, both Cape Wind and First Wind have been accused by critics of taking advantage of pro-alternative energy programs for financial gain.
In 2006, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University undertook the most comprehensive review yet of Cape Wind's public subsidies.
"What we found was quite remarkable," David Tuerck, the institute's executive director, said at the time. "Cape Wind stands to receive subsidies worth $731 million, or 77 percent of the cost of installing the project and 48 percent of the revenues it would generate. The policy question that this amount of subsidy raises is whether the project's benefit is worth the huge public subsidies that the developer gets."
Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rogers said the wind farm would only receive government monies after it is up and working, and meeting certain production criteria.
"It's all performance-based," he said.
In September, after First Wind affiliates received $115 million in federal stimulus money, U.S. Rep. Eric J. Massa (D-N.Y.) wrote to President Barack Obama, calling the grants "very alarming" and saying the company "abused the public trust.
"No electricity has been produced for sale out of the projects," but the company "has already collected production rewards for non-existent energy," Massa told Obama.
First Wind CEO Paul Gaynor, a former Enron executive, responded in a letter to Obama, saying that First Wind's New York wind farms have produced 133,370 megawatt hours of clean, renewable energy. "We are proud of our work in New York and appreciate the grants we received," he wrote.
Caffyn, whose 2007 divorce records show he amassed an $82 million fortune building wind farms around the world, said late last week that all the completed projects he has been involved with were properly constructed and met the promised performance standards.
cmcconville@bostonherald.com
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3638058
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3/8/10 - Another $117 Million For First Wind
First Wind Holdings LLC will get a $117 million loan guarantee from federal "stimulus" funds to finance the construction and start-up of a wind energy project in Kahuku, Hawaii, the federal Department of Energy announced Friday. Once complete, the project will create "six to ten" jobs, according to the Department of Energy. At $117 million, works out to a federally guaranteed loan of between $19.5 million and $11.7 million for each job created.
Last year, when the Obama administration awarded its first windmill windfall of $115 million to First Wind, wereported on some of First Wind's connections to the administration:
First Wind ... had owners that included D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners. Shaw is the firm at which President Obama's chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job, and Madison Dearborn is the firm of which Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, said, "They've been not only supporters of mine, they're friends of mine."...
First Wind, for its part, paid $150,000 in the first 6 months of 2009 to lobbyists at the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP. Disclosure forms indicate the firm lobbied the Energy and Treasury departments on behalf of First Wind in relation to the stimulus law. Brownstein Hyatt listed four lobbyists working on the case: a former Treasury department official, Michael Levy; a former Energy department official, C. Kyle Simpson; Michael McAdams, and Norman Brownstein. Mr. Brownstein goes back so far in Democratic politics that a New York Timesarticle back in 1996 was already describing him as a "longtime Gore friend." This release from the Campaign Finance Institute reports that Mr. Brownstein pledged to raise $1 million for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver at which Mr. Obama was nominated, over and above Mr. Brownstein's law firm partner Steven Farber's efforts as a co-chairman of the convention host committee.
First Wind also paid $75,000 in the first half of 2009 to a Boston-based lobbying firm, Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications. Rasky Baerlein's filings indicate it lobbied Congress rather than the administration. The firm listed a total of five staff members assigned to the project: Mike Gorman, George Cronin, Jeff Terrey, David Tamasi, and Emily Gombar. Mr. Cronin, the firm's Web site says, was "a senior advisor and New England political director for US Sen. Joseph Biden's 2008 Presidential campaign." The firm's namesake, Larry Rasky, took a leave from the firm in 2007 "to join the "Biden for President" campaign as its communications director. He previously served as press secretary for U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden's 1988 presidential bid," according to the firm's Web site, which notes Mr. Rasky was also "deputy press secretary for President Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign in 1980."
http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/03/another-117-million-for-first-wind
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7/27/10 - Secretary Chu Announces Closing of $117 Million Loan Guarantee for Kahuku Wind Power Project
Washington D.C. --- Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced that the Department of Energy has finalized a $117 million loan guarantee for Kahuku Wind Power, LLC, the owner and operator of the Kahuku Wind Power project. The project includes the development of an innovative 30 megawatt (MW) wind power plant that will supply electricity to approximately 7,700 households per year. According to company estimates, the project, located in Kahuku, Hawaii, will create over 200 jobs on the island of Oahu.
"This project is another example of America's leadership in the global clean energy economy," said Secretary Chu. "Through the Recovery Act, we are supporting innovative projects that are adding to our workforce in the short term while laying the foundation for additional job creation in the long term."
"This project represents what our national energy policy is attempting to accomplish: clean energy displacing imported oil in Hawaii to generate electricity, and in the process reducing our carbon output and creating green jobs," said Senator Daniel Inouye
"The Kahuku wind project will bring Hawaii 30 megawatts closer to energy independence," said Senator Daniel K. Akaka. "Reducing our reliance on imported oil will mean cleaner skies and more local jobs. This project is an important step forward."
"There is an urgent need to establish renewable energy sources in Hawaii and the state has mapped an ambitious plan to achieve this. The federal loan guarantee announced today boosts this effort," said Congresswoman Mazie K. Hirono. "The Kahuku Wind Project is the type of project that Hawaii needs to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and keep billions of dollars in our economy."
The project is expected to be the first to meet reliability requirements for wind and solar energy set by Hawaiian Electric Company, the only electric utility operating on Oahu. Successful integration of these new, clean energy technologies is expected to result in increased renewable energy generation and wind energy expansion in Hawaii.
The Kahuku wind power plant uses twelve 2.5 megawatt Liberty wind turbine generators manufactured by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California and a 10 megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS) manufactured by Xtreme Power Inc. of Kyle, Texas. The BESS will modulate and smooth fluctuations in power output caused by changes in wind levels. When completed, Kahuku will produce the first-ever combined installation of Clipper wind turbines and Xtreme's battery energy storage system.
First Wind Holdings, LLC, the project sponsor and independent U.S.-based wind energy developer, successfully built and currently operates Hawaii's largest wind energy facility, the 30 megawatt Kaheawa Wind project in Maui. Kaheawa Wind serves nearly nine percent of Maui's annual electricity needs with clean, renewable energy.
Including this loan, the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office has closed or offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees to support 13 clean energy projects.
http://energy.gov/articles/secretary-chu-announces-closing-117-million-loan-guarantee-kahuku-wind-power-project
7/28/10 - Kahuku wind farm lands $117M loan guarantee
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jul 28, 2010
First Wind Holdings LLC has closed on a $117 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department to build a wind farm in Kahuku, the federal agency said yesterday.
The 30-megawatt project is being built by Kahuku Wind Power LLC, a unit of Newton, Mass.-based First Wind. The project is expected to create more than 200 jobs, the Department of Energy said in a news release.
The power will be sold to Hawaiian Electric Co., Oahu's only electric utility, under a 20-year contract. First Wind broke ground on the project this month and plans to complete it by early 2011.
The wind farm will feature a dozen Clipper Liberty wind turbines with a maximum output of 2.5 megawatts each. Based on expected wind speeds at the site, the system will generate an estimated 83 million kilowatt-hours annually, the equivalent of 139,500 barrels of oil.
State officials say Kahuku Wind Power is one of the first wind farm projects to earn an Energy Department loan guarantee.
The agency conditionally offered the guarantee to First Wind in March. The guarantee was key to gaining financing from private lenders.
"We are very pleased to close on the loan guarantee for our Kahuku Wind project," Paul Gaynor, chief executive officer of First Wind, said in the release. "The Department of Energy and its Loan Programs Office have played a vital role in advancing this project."
Once completed, the project will support the Hawaiian Clean Energy Initiative, which aims to have 70 percent of the state's energy for electricity and ground transportation come from clean energy by 2030.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/business/20100728_Kahuku_wind_farm_lands_117M_loan_guarantee.html?id=99446494
Fair Use Notice: This website may reproduce or have links to copyrighted material the use of which has not been expressly authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available, without profit, as part of our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, economic, scientific, and related issues. It is our understanding that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided by law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.