Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine

A Maine company plans to build the state's first pumped storage hydropower facility in Oxford County.

Hydropower storage project proposed in Western Maine

Maine Public | By Peter McGuire

Published July 25, 2025 at 12:01 PM EDT

U.S. Department of Energy

Pumped storage hydropower works by transferring water through turbines between two reservoirs.

A Maine company plans to build the state's first pumped storage hydropower facility in Oxford County.

Western Maine Energy Storage filed a preliminary permit with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to evaluate the potential of constructing a 500 megawatt development in Dixfield.

Hydropower storage works by shifting water through turbines between two large reservoirs, said company spokesperson Tom Brennan. It's a technology with a long track record in the U.S. and across the world.

"There's two dozen or more operating systems in the U.S.," Brennan said. "What it essentially is is a water battery."

A typical system pumps water into a huge storage pool at times when electric prices and demand are low. Then when demand peaks, water is released to flow downhill, generating electricity, according to Brennan.

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Comment by Dan McKay 8 hours ago: Willem,

The project draws electricity from the grid at times of low demand and therefore, low prices, predominately natural gas-fired plants and nuclear plants, or, in other words, whatever the generation mix serving the ISO-NE wholesale market is at the time of replenishing the upper reservoir.

The project would release the water from the upper reservoir at peak hour(s) durations and obtain the higher wholesale prices. Buy low, sell high.

Hopefully, this project can lower electricity prices by offering lower bids than current peaker plants.The developers think they can, even without the RGGI penalties assessed to fossil fuel plants.

See Northfield Mountain Pump Storage in Massachusetts. Same concept. Also,look up quarterly reports from the FERC websites. The Northfield Mountain Pump Storage plant receives tremendous amounts of revenue as a capacity market resource.ISO-NE values peaker plants, paying them handsomely for being ready to supply timely power.

Comment by Willem Post 9 hours ago: New England has had no meaningful winds for weeks and no solar and night.

What would refill that reservoir?

Sounds like a super boondoggle

Comment by Willem Post 9 hours ago: Ask them if they would pursue that project, if no subsidies!

Comment by Willem Post 9 hours ago: Woke folks giving up RGGI would be like amputating a leg.

Their jobs depend on that rules, regulation and mandate structure

It all keeps their CO2 hoax going, which has screwed the people in the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, the US, etc

Comment by Dan McKay 11 hours ago: The proposed project is in an early stage of development. Cianbro reps attended a recent Dixfield select board meeting, answering a few questions.

One questioned their commitment to the project as they would be in competition with the natural gas-fired peaker plant in nearby Rumford and NextEra's oil-fired peaker plant in Yarmouth. They said they remained committed despite the competition and the potential onslaught of opposition from NextEra.

Pressed further with information that RGGI, a carbon tax that adds nearly $10 per megawatt hour to production costs to natural gas plants and even more to oil plants and would Cianbro still remain committed if RGGI was terminated and/or the Renewable Energy Program was terminated, they said they are in it for the "long run" irregardless of political maneuvers, which is impetus to call for the abolishment of "the carbon tax" and the Renewable Energy Credit" scam that is a big part of Maine's record breaking rise in electricity prices.

Comment by Willem Post yesterday: The system would also provide power in case of a short term outage.

A 500 MW plant?

How much electricity, MWh, would it deliver, for how many hours, to empty the upper reservoir to its minimum level.

What generators would be used to refill the upper reservoir, especially during a wind/solar lull lasting up to 7 days?

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U.S. Sen Angus King

THE UNTOLD STORY OF RECORD HILL WIND

The Untold Story of Record Hill Wind, continued

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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