Long Islander's Blog (2,843)

Saving Maine’s dark skies (BDN)

Time to start communicating with groups trying to protect the night sky.

The eighth Acadia Night Sky Festival will run Thursday, Sept. 22, through Sunday, Sept. 25, with a full schedule of events planned throughout Mount Desert Island.......Kicking off the popular star party this year, Chad Moore, founder of the National Park Service’s Dark Skies Team, will be giving a presentation from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24,…

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Added by Long Islander on September 18, 2016 at 8:58pm — 1 Comment

John Baldacci's Wind Company Avangrid to Renege on Promise?

Ex-Governor Baldacci, the father of the heinous Maine wind law is of course Vice-Chair of subsidy-seeker Avangrid, the second largest wind company in America. As Maine falls prey to foreign interlopers, is Mr. Baldacci patting himself on the back for his incredible fore$ight? 

John Baldacci's ascendance to Vice Chair of Iberdrola's Avangrid was announced quietly in a mid-December 2016 SEC filing (FORM…

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Added by Long Islander on September 16, 2016 at 9:00am — 1 Comment

BDN - National Park Service hears from stakeholders about North Woods monument

As the National Park Service meets its neighbors in the area east of Katahdin, hopefully they become aware of those neighbors who would like to welcome in scores of mammoth 500-600' tall flashing industrial wind turbines which would surely despoil views from the new monument as well as from Baxter State Park.…

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Added by Long Islander on September 15, 2016 at 9:50pm — No Comments

New Maine wind project owner arrives amid fight over proposed site in Moosehead region (PPH)

These projects are in various stages of development. In Maine, Somerset Wind is a 26-turbine proposal near Moosehead Lake that’s rated at 85 megawatts. It has no permits, but according to SunEdison’s submission in the New England Clean Energy RFP, it’s “one of the most attractive sites in the Northeast for its combination of scale and quality of wind resource.”...........

In June, Pattern Energy Group…

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Added by Long Islander on September 15, 2016 at 9:00am — 11 Comments

Baxter State Park Alarmed With Viewshed Concerns About Significant Structures and Night Lighting

In an open letter to the newly created Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument (KWWNM) to the east of Katahdin and Baxter State Park, BSP Director Jensen Bissell has expressed his concerns about the new monument's effect on views from Baxter State Park. Specifically, Jensen writes he is "particularly concerned with the addition of significant structures that may be visible from Katahdin, and from the impact of night lighting in the currently very night-sky-friendly area east of the…

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Added by Long Islander on September 15, 2016 at 12:29am — 9 Comments

Vaclav Smil: A Critical Look at Claims for Green Technologies

Green technologies are not yet proved, affordable, or deployable—but even if they were, it would still take them generations to solve our environmental problems

By Vaclav Smil

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Added by Long Islander on September 14, 2016 at 10:00am — 1 Comment

BDN: Baxter Park director frets about new monument next door including scenic impacts

"Night lighting and buildings that interfere with Baxter’s viewshed also should be avoided, Bissell wrote". 

If a small visitor center in the national monument impacts the Baxter State Park viewshed, what about the 500' + tall wind turbines planned for just a few miles east of the monument? They would be far more visible than a small building and would impair views in both Baxter State Park and the national monument.…

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Added by Long Islander on September 14, 2016 at 7:00am — 6 Comments

Portland Press Herald Runs Major Shill Piece for Wind

The article seems to candy coat wind energy, never mentioning wind's huge problems including massive transmission costs, lack of grid scale electricity storage, lack of dispatchability, highly destructive environmental impacts, highly deleterious human impacts, harm to wildlife, future decommissioning nightmares, loss of property values, transmogrification of viewsheds, community divisiveness, diversion of attention from true energy research and growing worldwide opposition to wind…

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Added by Long Islander on September 13, 2016 at 7:00am — 4 Comments

Vermont Gubernatorial Candidate Calls for Ban on Ridgeline Wind Development

He added that if he wins the election he would use an executive order to stop new projects. Such a moratorium would likely last for as long as Scott remains in office..........Other concerns discussed at the gathering included the project’s impact on property values, wildlife, water runoff, turbine noise and more. Numerous residents noted that the rocky landscape would carry sound to more homes. Others said the use of renewable energy credits would cancel out any green benefits to the…

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Added by Long Islander on September 11, 2016 at 3:22pm — No Comments

Aroostook County: Power Purchasing Agreement for Number Nine Wind Project Terminated

Please see Dan McKay's comment below.

"The Maine DEP is proposing a rule change in the tangible benefit section "Evidence of a power purchase agreement or other agreement to distribute the electricity."  This would open the door to revealing how Maine is being used to comply with other state laws while corrupting the state's landscape......................................" (See Comment section)

Aroostook County: Power Purchasing Agreement for Number Nine Wind…

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Added by Long Islander on September 9, 2016 at 11:00am — 4 Comments

PPH - Rhode Islanders Reject Wind as Their Wind Energy Mandates Foist it on Mainers

Even as Rhode Island makes history as the first U.S. state with an offshore wind farm, its people are not so fond of wind turbines sprouting up on land near where they live......Rhode Island is tiny and densely populated. And people who like the idea of wind energy in the abstract rarely want it near their own backyards, …

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Added by Long Islander on September 5, 2016 at 9:30am — No Comments

UMaine's Habib Dagher slams Hoover Dam's capacity factor in praising wind but ignores dispatchability

".....But the massive Hoover Dam, which has a nameplate capacity of 2,000 megawatts, has a capacity factor of only 25 percent. That’s because the flow of a river, like wind, fluctuates over time. So a 50 percent capacity factor for offshore wind energy is actually pretty decent".…

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Added by Long Islander on August 31, 2016 at 2:30pm — 2 Comments

Sen. Chuck Grassley: Trump can get rid of wind energy ‘over my dead body’

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the author of the original wind energy tax credit in 1992, said a hypothetical President Trump wouldn’t be able to get rid of wind power in the U.S. as long as he’s alive. The GOP nominee has railed for years that wind farms are “ugly,” “obsolete” and “terrible for the…

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Added by Long Islander on August 31, 2016 at 6:38am — 3 Comments

Wind industry: Replace transmission after only 25 years to accommodate wind - after all, it's not our money!

If building wind projects on the Maine woods' skyline is the crime, then building the required new transmission amounts to forcing the people to pay for the getaway car.

Read the article at: …

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Added by Long Islander on August 24, 2016 at 10:57am — 13 Comments

PPH - Frighteningly limited baseload supply (NE Ratepayers Association)

CONCORD, N.H. — On Aug. 17, the Massachusetts supreme court vacated a rulingby the state’s Department of Public Utilities that would have permitted electric utilities to charge ratepayers for pipeline capacity – and then sell the gas to generators. This could be the swan song for the last major natural gas pipeline expansion project on the table for New England.......................

Marc Brown is executive director of the New England Ratepayers Association in Concord,…

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Added by Long Islander on August 24, 2016 at 10:56am — 1 Comment

First Wind Spinoff Out to Sea

The CEO was the chief of staff of the governor of Rhode Island.

Initial financing for the $300 million project came from the D. E. Shaw Group, a big investment firm based in Manhattan.

D. E. Shaw’s head of United States private equity investment, Bryan Martin, had invested huge sums…

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Added by Long Islander on August 24, 2016 at 10:56am — No Comments

Rural Mainers want more say in fast-tracked wind projects (PPH)

Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association, said some investors are now being “scared off” with towns leaving the zone. Payne said the expedited state process already includes public hearings and can take years.........

http://www.pressherald.com/2016/08/20/rural-mainers-want-more-say-in-fast-tracked-wind-projects/

Added by Long Islander on August 20, 2016 at 1:56pm — 3 Comments

End industrial wind nightmare

It’s true. The system is broken, it’s corrupt, and it doesn’t matter how many people bring attention to it. They do not care, which has been said all along, and once again, confirmed.

http://www.windaction.org/posts/45578-end-industrial-wind-nightmare#.V7MVSvkrKUk

Added by Long Islander on August 16, 2016 at 9:36am — No Comments

Wind Industry Furious That Wyoming Is Taxing Wind Turbines

Case worries too many wind turbines could ruin the state’s tourism industry and outdoor feel.

“Wind turbines are an irreversible change to the landscape,.......The benefits of wind are disproportionately on the West Coast, and the costs of wind are disproportionately in Wyoming — and I mean the social costs,”…

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Added by Long Islander on August 16, 2016 at 8:52am — 2 Comments

BDN - Wind farm proposal near Moosehead Lake has potential buyer

The renewable energy giant SunEdison has asked a bankruptcy judge to approve its sale of various wind projects, including a proposal near Moosehead Lake that has generated local opposition.

SunEdison wants to sell the proposed 26-turbine project on Misery Ridge as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and it has asked a court to allow the renewable energy division of the Houston-based NRG to serve as the starting bidder, or…

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Added by Long Islander on August 16, 2016 at 12:00am — No Comments

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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/

Not yet a member?

Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?

We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

 -- Mahatma Gandhi

"It's not whether you get knocked down: it's whether you get up."
Vince Lombardi 

Task Force membership is free. Please sign up today!

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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