As the Wind Blows, the Jobs Go
What to do with 613 megawatts of wind energy when the load demand within Maine is between 1000 to 1400 megawatts at any given time ?
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Comment by Penny Gray on January 20, 2016 at 4:41pm
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About MPUC
The Commission regulates electric, natural gas, telecommunications and water utilities to ensure that Maine consumers enjoy safe, adequate and reliable services at rates that are just and reasonable for both consumers and utilities. The Commission oversees emerging competitive markets for some of these services.
So, how can the PUC plug (and ask for more $$$) for 100% green power (in order to promote the build out of more wind power in Maine) when the contracts are being sold out of state? I just don't get how the PUC can be involved in something like this. They're suppose to protect the rate payer, not hoodwink them.
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Comment by Barbara Durkin on January 20, 2016 at 2:18pm
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I think the Green Jobs refrain began when the excessive cost of wind became widely recognized....wind must have some value, right?
''Green Jobs'' (how cynical?)
$9 Billion in ‘Stimulus’ for Solar, Wind Projects Made 910 Final Jobs -- $9.8 Million Per Job
By Michael W. Chapman and Fred Lucas
June 20, 2012''(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs -- annual operation and maintenance positions -- meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.''http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...
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What is a Green Job?
REP. ISSA: If I asked you a question. You know the
answer. Would you please answer it. If you sweep the floor in a solar
panel facility, is that a green job?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: Thank you. If you drive a hybrid bus — public transportation — is that a green job?
MR. GALVIN: According to our definition, yes.
REP. ISSA: Thank you. What if you’re a college professor teaching classes about environmental studies?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: What about just any school bus driver?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: What about the guy who puts gas in the school bus?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.
REP. ISSA: How about employees at a bicycle shop?
MR. GALVIN: I guess I’m not sure about that.
REP. ISSA: The answer is yes, according to your definition. And
you’ve got a lot of them. What about a clerk at the bicycle repair shop?
MR. GALVIN: Yes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...
How curious that the RPS model mandate for the state's was spawned by the Texas PUC when Director of First Wind Patrick Wood III was then, 1999, Texas PUC Chairman.
The Director of First Wind is/was also the Director of SunPower (twice as bad as Solyndra $1.2 bn.), TPI Composites and Xtreme Battery (bankrupt) and previously financed by MA former Energy Secretary Ian Bowles of Sail Capital...who, after leaving office as MA energy chief, became Director of First Wind. Ian Bowles' (Founding Chairman of MA Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) that skims MA ratepayer dollars to invest in the sWINDle's successor, CEO of MassCEC Alicia Barton, left that office to join SunEdison and hasn't been heard from since :)
It's all so incestuous....
Former Governor Patrick had appointed First Wind CEO as Advisor on green policy to the Energy Secretary (Ian Bowles) under the Global Warming Solutions Act. This arrangement provided Gaynor the opportunity to craft energy policy that favored his product in his marketplace.
First Wind former Director Patrick Wood III is also accused of "lax government oversight that failed to protect U.S. consumers and markets from false data and price manipulation by corporate wrongdoers..." as former Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The Future now Past Director of First Wind was also "Asleep at the Switch"--
Senator Carl Levin US Senate Government Affairs November 12, 2002 ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH: FERC'S OVERSIGHT OF ENRON CORPORATION--VOL. I
107th Congress-
“The Enron scandal began by exposing dishonest accounting at a number of major U.S. companies that, unbeknownst to most, had begun to eat away at the reliability of their financial statements. It has since exposed the conflicts of interest that have made investors distrust investment reports issued by leading U.S. financial firms. It has exposed how those firms have become unwilling participants in shell companies, phony trade deals, and complex financial transactions used to inflate earnings, hide debt, and increase stock prices..” [cut]. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-107shrg83483/html/CHRG-107shrg834...
Senator Levin went on to state, “corporate executives have walked away from corporate disasters with millions in their pockets, often from exercising stock options, while pension funds, investors, employees and creditors have lost everything.”
hmmm...history appears to be repeating...(SUNE)
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Can't recall my source of information but I read that in Oregon, up on the Columbia, the power company requires that the wind turbines be shut down when the system overloads and in addition the wind facility gets PAID for the electricity that they COULD have generated but DIDN'T because it was not needed or wanted.
My understanding is that one of the largest wind facilities in the world is located in eastern Oregon - a lightly populated desert region far from the consumers. Those turbines would be on the flat open and barren land, not our New England forested and granite ridges and mountain tops. Controversial none the less.
But if you've looked at satellite views of the destroyed mountain tops in our state, at least on that barren terrain there is a chance of returning the land to its more natural state if wind energy becomes obsolete/ scam admitted/ smarter heads prevailing. If you get on the sat maps, look at our north 'woods'. See all those sustainable harvest trails? In Oregon they apparently still do the clear cut here and no cut there method. Either way, I'd like someone to calculate how much more CO2 would be consumed by totally untouched forest and oxygen returned to us human beings.
I'm not advocating prohibiting harvesting wood, just saying let's be open eyed and honest here. what happened to all the hue and cry about the rain forests disappearing? Haven't heard that one in a while? Not that I'm a big fan of the internal combustion engine or the coal power plant, but let's get realistic here people. We're so anthropocentric that we think we humans can cure all the world's woes, and moreover that all those woes were caused by humans. How about we stand back and just have some awe and reverence for the powers of god and nature and less awe and reverence for the powers of homo sapiens. (Yep, Pete, that's my sermon for today. :)
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Comment by Dan McKay on January 20, 2016 at 1:18pm
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Maine Green Power is a voluntary purchase of Renewable Energy Credits and will cost you $15 per megawatt-hour.......... Source: Marex Spectron (2015). Plotted values are the last trade (if available) or the mid-point of Bid and Offer prices, for the current or nearest future compliance year traded in each month. In September 2015, nationally-sourced voluntary RECs were approximately $0.50/MWh. The administrative costs for the PUC to run this legislative mandated program exceeds the revenues acquired by it. BTW, the PUC is funded by the ratepayers
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Comment by Whetstone_Willy on January 20, 2016 at 1:13pm
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Penny, if the Maine PUC program you flagged involves Mainers having to pay more for green, then the Massachusetts experience may provide insight:
In Massachusetts, which likes to boast that it is one of the "greenest" states in the nation, less than 1% of people are willing to pay more for "green" energy. This was in the Boston Globe on 1/20/10 and comes from the CEO of one of Massachusetts' largest utilities, NStar. If the Maine program has similar results, then we have yet one more "poll" showing that supposed public support for wind is all hype.
Please see:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/articles/2010/01/20/nstar_chi...
Here's a choice quote from NStar's CEO, Thomas May:
"Some programs have not been as popular as expected, May added. NStar Green, the program under which consumers can pay a premium to ensure some of their electricity is generated by wind, has attracted only 8,000 NStar customers - less than 1 percent of the company’s 1.1 million electricity consumers, he said. “We were a little disappointed that it was not greater,’’ May said. “Being the greenest state in the land of the free, we have a more educated audience, we have a more concerned, socially conscious audience. So we thought we would do better.’’
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Maine PUC has it all figured out: https://megreenpower.com
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Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on January 20, 2016 at 11:40am
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and Baldacci is such a menace- he started it all:)
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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