Consumer advocates oppose power line upgrade
This is in NH but Maine would share in the cost.
Maine Public | By Peter McGuire
Published August 16, 2024
Advocates for New England electric customers are raising alarm at the cost of a transmission line upgrade in New Hampshire.
Eversource Energy wants to replace more than 500 wooden poles with steel versions on a 49-mile corridor near the White Mountains.
The company said the $384 million project is critical to ensuring it can deliver reliable power to its customers, especially in the face of more intense storms driven by climate change.
But Maine Public Advocate Bill Harwood said Eversource's plans go far beyond what's needed. The company identified a few dozen worn out transmission poles to replace, but decided to upgrade the entire line instead, he added.
“New Hampshire only pays 9% of the cost of the project, the other 90% is exported to other ratepayers,” he added.
Continue reading at https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2024-08-16/consumer-advocates-o...
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Comment
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Comment by Dan McKay on August 19, 2024 at 2:24pm
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More fossil fuel generation plants retiring means all transmission upgrades in New England will be socialized. The retirement of the Mystic natural gas plant near Boston, which was pretty much in place to feed power only to Boston, required a compensating transmission upgrade which is being paid by all New England ratepayers.
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Comment by Eric A. Tuttle on August 18, 2024 at 11:04am
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It seems to me that Maine gets to pay a percentage of everyone else's power reliability issues.
Though I use very little in power by comparison to most, and $14.95 per month is just for the "Dumb Meter" be attached to the local "Unreliable" lines, My levelized cost this month exceeded 29¢ / Kwh.
Wind and solar, due to their extra supply of intermittent energy when operating drives the need for more capacity in transmission, however, 95%+ of the reliability issue is on the delivery side [ from the sub-station to the end user ]
We have seen our rates increase gradually over the years, with one excuse following another to justify those increases. However, as the increases kept increasing, so has the number of power outages.
There are ways to fix the issue of "Delivery Reliability" but the Maine Legislature will not force the cure, as they are unqualified to address the issue and the MPUC is just a Faux entity in purpose.
With OSW approaching becoming a reality NY state is looking to approach 79¢ / Kwh after its upcoming "Grid Reliability" upgrades.
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Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on August 18, 2024 at 10:43am
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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/
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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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