Long Islander's Blog (3,023)

While tornadoes were found to have taken down three transmission lines ahead of the blackout, the report suggests the system could have continued operating.

Instead it was the loss of power from the state’s wind farms that is thought to be one of the primary causes of the event.

The AEMO said a protection feature built-in to some wind farms, which the agency was not aware of before the blackout, caused some of them to reduce their output after a certain number of voltage…

By John Droz, Jr. -- December 12, 2016

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).…

Part I

There has been no compassion or relief. Officers charged by law with protecting the public health ignore or bluntly turn away concerns......please also view the complete and highly clear, peer-reviewed, easily readable review of health related wind turbine impact studies over 40 years, by Drs Jerry Punch and Rick James: The Negative Health Impact of Noise from Industrial Wind Turbines: The Evidence. It is our assessment that this document is really a…

November 2016

Attorney General Mills: Gut the First Amendment

By Jon Reisman

The Maine legislature will be electing constitutional officers in December. The expected candidacy and reelection of Democrat Attorney General Janet Mills will have important and far reaching implications for climate change policy, freedom of speech and association, partisan temperatures and the 2018 gubernatorial election.

Mills, daughter of a prominent western Maine family, has served…

At a meeting Friday in the Capitol Plaza Hotel, Stephen Ambrose, a sound consultant and member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering, argued that sound levels permitted in Vermont are too high and are causing sleeplessness, distress and other health-related symptoms.…

1603 Program: Payments for Specified Energy Property in Lieu of Tax Credits

"The purpose of the 1603 payment is to reimburse eligible applicants for a portion of the cost of installing specified energy property used in a trade or business or for the production of income. A 1603 payment is made after the energy property is placed in service; a 1603 payment is not made prior to or during construction of the energy property".

If you go to the following website and then…

Trump team questions EIA staff on added costs to transmit and back-up wind power (Bloomberg)

The group also questions whether any technologies or products that have emerged from Energy Department programs “are currently offered in the market without any subsidy” ........

The Energy Information Administration, the department’s statistical arm, is the subject of at least 15 questions that probe its staffing, data and analytical decisions,…

Agencies such as the EPA, he said, should not be trying to “pinch hit” for Congress......Pruitt has spent much of his energy as attorney general fighting against the agency he will now lead.....…

The joint project proposed by the two utilities, called the Maine Renewable Energy Interconnect, would have linked the proposed 600MW King Pine wind farm and another 650MW from two other Aroostook County projects, Number Nine Wind Farm and Horse Mountain, via a new 150-mile transmission line that would connect with the regional grid in Pittsfield.…

By Jim Lutz -- December 5, 2016

It is time we make some hard decisions about who we are here in Maine. While it is important that we find alternative ways to make power, maybe we should consider going back to the hydro power we used here for generations of Mainers. Some of the dams we still have could be upgraded to boost the output to the same amount the wind farms generate. They provide steady reliable power, unlike wind. We could really cut back the use of…

We face a David vs. Goliath fight over the wind turbine project, but our island is worth fighting for.... we represent the views of nearly half of Monhegan Island residents, as well as many other seasonal residents and visitors from around the world. …

“It does show a good symbol for the city in its energy type things, but, if it doesn’t run, it isn’t really setting a good example I guess.”…

.......................The project was proposed three years ago, but needed new transmission lines to connect it with the New England grid. That has taken longer than expected, and last summer, the project lost a power-purchase agreement with Connecticut utilities.

Since then, a proposal to build new transmission lines from northern Maine was rejected during a bidding process in which the three southern New England states were choosing clean-energy projects, the Portland…

“Decades of corruption, poor decision-making and wealthy special interests controlling Augusta” have left the state shouldering higher-than-necessary costs for energy, the governor said......LePage seeks to end initiatives aimed at bolstering wind and solar use that call for above-market-rate payments that proponents say are needed to get the renewable sectors off the ground. He prefers to move toward more use of natural gas and imported hydropower.......…

The renewable energy industry got a boost last year when Congress approved a five-year extension of tax credits for new power projects fueled by solar panels and wind turbines, and the industry’s main concern in Washington is to ensure they are not withdrawn in Trump’s first term, or allowed to expire should he win a second.…

Efforts to reach attorneys for First Wind to determine if an appeal might be filed were unsuccessful Tuesday.

The 2011 contract required the wind power companies to act in good faith to finalize the sale to the cooperative of a 12.54-mile section of transmission line connecting two wind farms located on Stetson Mountain in northern Washington County and another on Rollins Mountain near Lincoln in Penobscot County to the electric power grid, according to a press release issued Monday…

November 22, 2016

“One thing Mr Trump kept returning to was the issue of wind farms. He is a complete Anglophile and also absolutely adores Scotland which he thinks is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. “But he is dismayed that his beloved Scotland has become over-run with ugly wind farms which he believes are a blight on the stunning landscape.”…

“Phyllis may have reported more stories about conservation issues in Maine than anyone,” St. Pierre said. “It was not just the extensive breadth of issues Phyllis wrote about, it was her approach that stood out. Always thorough in her reporting, she was respected by virtually everyone she covered, whether or not they agreed.”

An avid hiker, she trekked the Himalayas in Nepal and in the Scottish Highlands. Her last piece “On Reaching the End of the Trail” was published in the…

"The wind PTC is an enormous government handout, and it is wrong to borrow money from future generations to give away corporate favors to those who promise jobs but – as we can see now in Kansas – who cannot deliver on that promise without continued reliance on other taxpayers.

Most important, the wind PTC does not work. Proof of this is that the wind PTC has been in effect for two decades and, still, wind-generated electricity is multiples more expensive than other sources of…

By Lisa Linowes -- November 18, 2016

“After billions in public hand-outs spanning nearly four decades, big wind has never been able to stand on its own and there’s no reason to believe this will change. … If yanking the handouts causes the industry to flat line then so be it. The US has elected a businessman at the helm who understands what it means to cut your losses. It’s time we did exactly that!”

Elections matter!

Last week, untold thousands of…