Former director of Maine PUC's Consumer Division Rails Against Wind Deal
MAINE COMPASS: PUC approval of offshore wind contract unfair to rat...
Maine experienced years of controversy about long-term energy contracts at high prices before the state's electricity system was revamped and a "competitive" market for the sale of electricity was created in the late 1990s.
Apparently, however, the Public Utilities Commission has forgotten the lessons learned from that experience. Maine has embarked on the approval of long-term contracts for certain favored sources, such as renewable energy and offshore wind energy, relying on vague, unsupported and unenforceable public policy purposes.
As a result, residential ratepayers pay relatively short-term prices based on wholesale market contracts for Standard Offer Service plus surcharges of these long-term contracts that distribution utilities, such as Central Maine Power Co., pass along to ratepayers.
Last week, the Public Utilities Commission deliberated a "term sheet" from Statoil Hywind Maine Project that states that the terms were negotiated between the commission and the distribution utilities (CMP, Bangor Hydro and Maine Public Service).
The PUC approved this term sheet for a 20-year contract that will begin upon the commercial operation of one to four wind turbines located off the Maine coast, probably not until 2016. The commission directed the Maine utilities to buy the energy and capacity from Statoil's wind turbines in an amount up to 12 megawatts annually, a negligible amount needed to serve Maine homes and businesses.
The PUC has not yet issued its formal written order on this contract.
The price for the energy delivered by this project is far in excess of the market price for electricity being paid by Maine consumers now and for the foreseeable future.
The contract price in the term sheet starts out at 27 cents per kilowatt hour, but this price will change annually. In contrast, the current comparable price in the wholesale market for energy is about 5 cents per kWh.
Continue reading here: http://www.kjonline.com/opinion/columnists/puc-approval-of-offshore...
Barbara R. Alexander of Winthrop was the director of the Maine PUC's Consumer Assistance Division from 1986-1996. Since 1996, she has been a consultant for state and national consumer advocates for a wide range of public policy issues associated with utility regulation.
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Comment
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Comment by Dan McKay on February 5, 2013 at 9:25am
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" However, the era of forced taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies to politically popular energy producers is over. " Gov. LePage , August 31,2011 Excerpt from letter to the Governor's Wind Energy Coalition.
The members of our legislature placed the PUC in a no-win situation by forcing them to solicit for contracts with off-shore wind developers. Every one of our legislators should be asked if they want to see 27 cent per kilowatt electricity forced upon the ratepayers and, if they do, why ???? How many will duck this question ?
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Comment by Long Islander on February 4, 2013 at 10:07pm
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Hart - We need a citizen's ratepayer group. Run by citizens, funded just like the PUC or Public Advocate.
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Comment by Hart Daley on February 4, 2013 at 8:39pm
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Maine's PUC is as corrupt as Baldacci was and is. How in the world does a whole state of people answer to the bidding of 3 individuals on how much we pay and what type of energy we use. When will people finally say enough is enough?
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Comment by Monique Aniel Thurston on February 4, 2013 at 8:08pm
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After the Emera /First wind deal was struck last year , Tom Welch , Chairman of the PUC was quoted on NPR saying that that deal would provide " lots of jobs " .
I asked the MPUC Public Advocate if anywhere in their mission statement the PUC understood that their was job to help " create economical opportunities " as well as to protect ratepayers and what exactly was the PUC mission statement.
Here is his response :
THe PUC “mission statement” is, essentially, the statute that created the PUC and which defines its duties and responsibilities – Title 35-A of the Maine statutes. If there is any one section of that statute that is a “mission statement” it would be Section 101:
- §101. Statement of purpose
The purpose of this Title is to ensure that there is a regulatory system for public utilities in the State that is consistent with the public interest and with other requirements of law and to provide for reasonable licensing requirements for competitive electricity providers. The basic purpose of this regulatory system is to ensure safe, reasonable and adequate service and to ensure that the rates of public utilities are just and reasonable to customers and public utilities
(end of the public advocate statement ).
Statoil and Emera /First Wind decisions, both approved by the PUC , are not seeking the best interests of the ratepayers and do not fullfill the PUC mission statement as described above .
This is an unbelievable abuse of the public trust .
Monique Aniel
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i am posting a piece I wrote in August 2010 and which was published in the BDN after John Baldacci nominated David Littell as PUC commissioner .Littell was one of the two PUC commissioners ( out of three ) who voted for the Statoil contract last week ( and the First Wind /Emera deal last spring ).It was indeed a very smart move !From the Bangor Daily News
8/11/10 08:19 pm
By Monique Aniel Special to the NEWS
Wind power in Maine is a chess game, a chess game for those protected by multinational companies and allies in the current administration.
It is a game that took 20 years to design, a game that redefined new rules for state and federal agencies, reshaping their mandates of protecting America’s citizens and majestic lands into doing the exact opposite.
A game that put people’s rights and public health behind those of the wind industry and simply ignored the complaints of those disturbed by the maddening whoosh of turbines.
Wind power is a game that turns electricity, which is already expensive, into a thrice absurdly expensive commodity hurting the pocketbook of residential and business customers alike. First in the purchasing cost, second in the cost of subsidies necessary to support the inefficiency and unreliability of this industry and third in the ratepayer-funded new electrical transmission structures required to accommodate the thermal stresses of spurting wind generation.
Wind power is a game that sacrifices America ’s natural heritage for the profits of parasitic corporations adept at exploiting government policies, political correctness, guilty consciences of environmental organizations and fears about our environment.
John Baldacci is in a hurry. He badly wants to win at this wind power game. He sees the growing statewide opposition and the national economic conditions endangering his strategy. He sees his eight years of gaming as governor ending in five short months and fears a new administration with the common sense to put an end to the wastefulness of public spending, increased costs in electricity and human suffering.
John Baldacci designed the game when he signed a law, LD 2283, that removed all obstacles to the permanent disfigurement of 360 miles of mountain ridges with 1,800 wind turbines, twice the height of the tallest building in the state.
But along the way he got help.
His friend and chief counsel of three years, Kurt Adams, former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission and now a vice president of First Wind, helped convince the Legislature that wind power was a good game. They believed him and unanimously passed the governor’s law in 2008.
The law was called the “Expedited Wind Power Law” and was the result of the Governor’s Task Force on Wind Power, an exercise in ideological and environmental insanities that would set in motion sweeping and abhorrent land-use changes.
His other ally David Littell, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, helped implement the governor’s law by giving permits to hungry developers without serious regard for the environment he was charged to protect.
David Littell was an architect of and is implementing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a sort of New England version of the now defunct federal cap and trade. That initiative was created at the time Maine was already a model in the use of renewables as sources of fuel for its electrical production.
Now the game is changing. The law is in place but a growing opposition in the state, the country and the world is questioning and refuting the energy, economic and environmental premises of wind power. Meanwhile, a $1.5 billion transmission project has recently been approved by the PUC, sold to the citizens as necessary to replace aging lines. It is now being described by the outgoing PUC chairman and Central Maine Power spokepersons as vital to the sale of wind power by a tiny few to Massachusetts and Connecticut — the real reason all along.
So the governor is moving his chess pieces. He has just nominated Kurt Adams as a trustee of the board of the Maine University System and David Littell as PUC commissioner
The Maine university system has a sizable research program into development of the next generations of wind turbines. With Kurt Adams as a trustee, the agenda of the wind industry will be just a bit more secure.
The PUC is the agency giving permits to the building of transmission lines necessary to export wind power electrons. With David Littell as chairman, residents fighting against those new lines may just have a little bit more work to do .
If there is any hope for John Baldacci to cash in on his wind policies, he must keep the chess game moving so the game can either go on or be won.
Adams and Littell are excellent moves for the wind industry, much less palatable for its victims.
Monique Aniel of Mexico is a retired physician and co-chairwoman of the Citizens’ Task Force on Wind Power.
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Comment by Barbara Durkin on February 4, 2013 at 6:04pm
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If the goal is reliable energy by a source that is commercially reasonable, offshore wind is not the way to go.
Even by the titan's of the wind industry's admissions, offshore wind is like an old crappy car.
Vestas offshore wind president costs may kill industryAOL Energy 12/13/11"Offshore wind is a higher cost energy because we are where we are in the learning curve," said Anders Søe-Jensen, president of the offshore division at Vestas. "We are at risk but we all have to commit to bringing down costs otherwise we're going to kill our industry."Vestas Søe-Jensen: "It's a bit like buying an old crappy car. It's starts cheap, but spends most of the time in the workshop costing you a fortune, so you didn't drive much, and your cost per driven mile is staggeringly high. It's the same with the cost of energy when you look at capital expense and operating costs with overall production."SPIEGEL ONLINE
09/04/2012 11:34
AM
Germany's Offshore
Fiasco
North Sea
Wind Offensive Plagued by Problems
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-offshore-wind-offensive-plagued-by-problems-a-852728.html
‘Foundations Of 1000 Offshore Wind Turbines Crumbling’“The foundations of some 1000 offshore wind turbines are crumbling. Danish companies face law suits over the liability and the yet unknown bills for repairs. A large brawl in the wind industry is underway. Serious design flaws in the foundations of some 1000 offshore wind turbines are now leading to lawsuits against and financial losses of several Danish companies. However, there is no overview of the problem, its economic scale and who will have to foot the bill.” –Jakob Skouboe, Boerse, 4 June 2012″
http://borsen.dk/nyheder/avisen/artikel/11/24776/artikel.html?utm_s... Word About Wind&utm_campaign=1c94b14d21-28th_April4_21_2011&utm_medium=email
Selectmen of Falmouth, MA have voted to take down two wind turbines that have caused the decline in health of families. The project manager estimates the cost to remove two land-based wind turbines as $11.9 million dollars. If two land based wind turbines fail with public risk of $11.9 million, what will be the cost of failure of 4 wind turbines offshore be to rate and taxpayers already burdened by triple current cost energy if all goes well.
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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