Maine lawmakers seek more coordinated grid planning
By: AnnMarie Hilton - April 30, 2025
Energy policy has moved quickly in the past few years as Maine has sought to achieve climate and affordability goals with deadlines that are not so far off.
Rep. Gerry Runte (D-York) suspects there hasn’t been sufficient time to take a 50,000-foot view to see how all the pieces of energy supply and demand could plan and work together. He’s hoping the bipartisan bill he introduced during a public hearing Tuesday afternoon will formalize and increase collaboration between agencies involved in grid planning.
“I need to emphasize: the intent of this bill is not to interfere with the ongoing grid planning process,” Runte told the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee. Rather, its purpose is “to refine how it interacts with other initiatives and give it a bit of a tune up for future planning.”
The grid is the system of transmission and distribution lines that bring electricity from where it is generated to the homes of ratepayers and other points of end use.
Last summer, the Public Utilities Commission concluded its process of gathering input on priorities for grid plans. The largest privately owned utilities in the state, Central Maine Power and Versant Power, are required to submit their plans next January, Runte said.
Meanwhile, the Governor’s Energy Office completed the state’s energy plan earlier this year that laid out pathways to achieve climate resilience and affordability goals. The portions of the plan that focused on electricity were based on a supply and demand forecast that considered reliability, emissions reductions, the role of emerging technologies and more, Runte explained.
As Runte understands it, that forecast in the state’s energy plan looked circuit by circuit to develop a bottom-up analysis. However, the forecasting model used in the Public Utility Commission’s grid planning looks at capacity and load data from the regional grid, ISO-New England, taking a more top-down approachGiven the connection between the state’s energy plan and future grid needs, Runte said he believes the agencies involved in grid planning should use the same load forecast. While LD 1726 calls for using the forecasting model in the state energy plan, Runte sa...................................
The full article can be read at https://mainemorningstar.com/2025/04/30/amid-rapidly-evolving-energ...
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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(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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