Actual power production data

  The Federal Energy Regulation Commission  (FERC) has a website that lists seemingly hundreds of energy producers in the USA.  The site has information on quarterly power sales and prices and some other details.   

  To check out the  Maine wind producers' actual power production you have to know the name FERC uses for them:

Mars Hill is "Evergreen Wind Power, LLC";

Stetson I is "Evergreen Wind Power V, LLC"

Stetson II is "Stetson Wind,LLC"

Kibby is "TransCanada Maine Wind Development, Inc"

Rollins (near Lincoln) is "Evergreen Wind Power III, LLC"

I found the site by Googling "FERC Quarterly reports."    UMPI and Vinalhaven are not large enough to be listed on the FERC website.

There are two boxes on the correct webpage, containing  long alpabetical lists of  power producers. Also there is a  list of dates for years' worth of quarterly data about power sales. FERC has some specilized terms for the producers and purchasers -"responders", etc.that I do not understand. 

   But this works: I  highlight the latest date,  scroll down the lefthand box through the company names, and highlight the desired company (see above) and wait. In a short time the right hand box will contain only the same producer's name - the one you want.  The date of the latest quarterly sales report available for that producer will be in a box at the top.  Sorry, I don't know how to explain this any better. 

 Click on "download", and the quarterly report appears.  The report contains the amount of  power sold rounded to thousands of megawatt hours.  There is lots of other information in the report, including high and low prices and the "number of lines",  which I think refers to lines of spreadsheet information. I ignore all this and just get the amount of power sold. I have been told that if you go to another page of the FERC site you can get many more details, including thousands of lines of information about bids, etc.  Much of the power is sold at auction, with wildly varying prices, but some producers, notably Mars Hill and Rollins, sell all of their power at a fixed price.  

  The term "Capacity" on the sheet refers to what I call 'backup" , which is potential power contracted to be available to the grid when necessary.  There is no information on the "installed capacity" of a producer on the webpage. You have to find that out yourself and do your own math to figure the "capacity factor" for a given period of time a quarter is 93 days.

   First Wind proudly lists the installed capacity of each wind farm on its website, but they never say anything about the amount of actual power produced.  This is considered secret  ("proprietary") information  in the business world.   I presume that the informaion on the FERC website is public.

  The FERC website has a attendant lady with a charming southern accent, Michell Reuex, whose telephone is listed on the webpage. She has been helpful to me and that's her job.

   This is the only way I know of to find out how much power is actually sold to the grid by a producer. 

Good Luck - Harry Roper  207-532-3797

Harryroper@myfairpoint.net