Maine offshore wind array on pause
Maine Public | By Peter McGuire
Published April 1, 2025 at 5:36 PM EDT
The developer of Maine’s first offshore wind array has paused the project amid the Trump administration’s backlash against the industry.
Pine Tree Offshore Wind asked to suspend negotiations with state regulators on a deal to sell power from its planned 12-turbine floating development in the Gulf of Maine.
The company requested the pause "due to recent shifts in the energy landscape that have in particular caused uncertainty in the offshore wind industry," the Maine Public Utilities Commission said in a March 28 filing.
Pine Tree Offshore Wind and state parties were under a March 31 deadline to propose a final contract to sell power from the proposed array to Maine's electric utilities. The confidential negotiations started three years ago.
That long-term contract would let the developer finance the development, said Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
"So the project really is sort of waiting to substantially move forward until that contract can be finalized," Shapiro said.
The planned development would be located about 30 miles off the coast on a special federal lease in the Gulf of Maine. Floating turbines designed at the University of Maine would have the capacity to generate 144 megawatts of power.
The project is part of the state's plans for large-scale development of wind power in the Gulf of Maine. Supporters argue the powerful winds in the gulf have the potential to provide significant clean power, and help the state reduce greenhouse gasses and curb its reliance on pricey out of state fossil fuels. Maine's plans to have 100% clean electricity by 2040 rely on a significant buildout of offshore wind power.
But hostility to offshore wind from the Trump administration has thrown plans in Maine and other U.S. states into question.
The administration's positions on offshore wind provoke uncertainty in the market about whether projects will get permits or be allowed to develop on federal leases, Shapiro said.
"This is reflective of the fact that we have an administration in Washington D.C. that doesn’t want Maine to take advantage of its most abundant renewable energy resource," he said.
The Maine Governor's Energy Office declined an interview request.
Continue reading at https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2025-04-01/maine-offshore-wind-...
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Comment by Willem Post on April 3, 2025 at 8:03am
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The super-expensive, 850-ft tall floating offshore windmills will “on pause” for at least the next 12 years, because no financing, and no insurance, at reasonable rates, will be available
The hundreds of career bureaucrats who had been working on this should be laid off to reduce the tax burden on over-regulated, over-taxed Maine folks, who see their culture being taken over by
1) thousands of walk- ins from all- over, and
2) males on women’s sports teams and in bathrooms and dressing rooms rooms.
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Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on April 2, 2025 at 11:49pm
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There Is Overwhelming Evidence That The Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Was Stolen, Says Roger Stone, “It’s A Matter Of Simple Math – The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up”
https://www.infowars.com/posts/exclusive-there-is-overwhelming-evid...
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Angus is concerned because he can't get graft and influence money from wind companies like he used to perhaps. He made a nice chunk of change, as well as his son, in Record Hill Wind well over a decade back from the graft company First Wind under Obama and then governor Baldacci of Maine.
Poor Angus and son. Angus never did an honest day's work in his life.He is just a subsidy sucking unctuous self-aggrandizing slime ball .
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A slack-jawed, dumbfounded Sen. Angus King of Maine noted that the 2025 annual threat assessment by the U.S. intelligence community made no mention of climate change. Tulsi responded by saying, “I can’t speak to the decisions made previously, but this annual threat assessment has been focused very directly on the threats that we deem most critical to the United States and our national security.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/the_gift_that_keeps_on...
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UK, GERMANY AND NORWAY
Norway gets 90% from hydro reservoir plants and 10% from west coast windmills.
Because of long distances, there is little connection between the north and south grid.
Any draw by the UK during W/S underproduction affects the south grid.
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The grid is pumped by generators to a voltage with 50-cycle electromagnetic waves which travel at near the speed of light. Electrons do not travel. They just vibrate at 50 Hz
.Any UK underproduction, resulting in voltage drops, is immediately sensed about 800 miles away, and compensated for, by automatically opening the water valves to hydro turbines in Norway.
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A few years ago, during a W/S lull, Norway oversupplied Germany and the UK, which resulted in much higher wholesale prices in the south grid, too low water levels in reservoirs, rationing, aka blackouts/brownouts, and lots of Norwegians with mandated EVs and mandated heat pumps being very angry.
.This time the W/S lull happened again, and, just like that, the ruling-party government fell. A new ruling-party Labor government was installed (Stoltenberg, formerly of NATO, became finance minister), which may, or may not, remedy the situation.
Never-the- less INSTANT DEMOCRACY.
We should have it in the US, instead of endless lying, obfuscation, grandstanding, obstruction, etc., for up to 4 years, or, God forbid, 8 years
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NOTE: I lived in Norway for 3 years.
My brother-in-law, worked at Norsk Hydro, as a managing director.
NH provides almost all hydro power in Norway.
We talk shop. He thinks the nutcases in Oslo should be exiled to Nova Zembla.
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EXPENSIVE FLOATING OFFSHORE WINDMILLS IN SUPER-RICH NORWAY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/floating-offshore-wind...
By Willem Post
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Equinor, a Norwegian company, put in operation, 11 Hywind, floating offshore wind turbines, each 8 MW, for a total of 88 MW, in the North Sea. The wind turbines are supplied by Siemens, a German company
Production will be about 88 x 8766 x 0.5, claimed lifetime capacity factor = 385,704 MWh/y, which is about 35% of the electricity used by 2 nearby Norwegian oil rigs, which cost at least $1.0 billion each.
On an annual basis, the existing diesel and gas-turbine generators on the rigs, designed to provide 100% of the rigs electricity requirements, 24/7/365, will provide only 65%, i.e., the wind turbines have 100% back up.
The generators will counteract the up/down output of the wind turbines, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365
The generators will provide almost all the electricity during low-wind periods, and 100% during high-wind periods, when rotors are feathered and locked.
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The capital cost of the entire project was about 8 billion Norwegian Kroner, or about $730 million, as of August 2023, when all 11 units were placed in operation, or $730 million/88 MW = $8,300/kW. See URL
That cost was much higher than the estimated 5 billion NOK in 2019, i.e., 60% higher
The project is located about 70 miles from Norway, which means minimal transport costs of the entire supply to the erection sites
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The project produces electricity at about 42 c/kWh, no subsidies, at about 21 c/kWh, with 50% subsidies
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt
In Norway, all work associated with oil rigs is very expensive.
Three shifts of workers are on the rigs for 6 weeks, work 60 h/week, and get 6 weeks off with pay, and are paid well over $150,000/y, plus benefits.
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If Norwegian units were used in Maine, the production costs would be even higher in Maine, because of the additional cost of transport of almost the entire supply, including specialized ships and cranes, across the Atlantic Ocean, plus
A high voltage cable would be hanging from each unit, until it reaches bottom, say about 200 to 500 feet.
The cables would need some type of flexible support system
The cables would be combined into several cables to run horizontally to shore, for at least 25 to 30 miles, to several onshore substations, to the New England high voltage grid.https://www.offshore-mag.com/regional-reports/north-sea-europe/arti...
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EXPENSIVE FLOATING OFFSHORE WINDMILLS IN IMPOVERISHED STATE OF MAINE
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/floating-offshore-wind...
By Willem Post
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Despite the meager floating offshore MW in the world, pro-wind politicians, bureaucrats, etc., aided and abetted by the lapdog Main Media and "academia/think tanks", in the impoverished State of Maine, continue to fantasize about building 850-ft-tall floating offshore windmills, each mounted on a 50% submerged, steel platform at least 250 ft x 250 ft x 75 ft tall to maintain the windmill in upright position in all conditions.
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Maine government bureaucrats, etc., in a world of their own climate-fighting fantasies, want to have about 3,000 MW of floating wind turbines by 2040; a most expensive, totally unrealistic goal, that would further impoverish the already-poor State of Maine for many decades.
Those bureaucrats, etc., would help fatten the lucrative, 20-y, tax-shelters of mostly out-of-state, multi-millionaire, wind-subsidy chasers, who likely have minimal regard for: 1) Impacts on the environment and the fishing and tourist industries of Maine, and 2) Already-overstressed, over-taxed, over-regulated Maine ratepayers and taxpayers, who are trying to make ends meet in a near-zero, real-growth economy.
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Those fishery-destroying, 850-ft-tall floaters, with 24/7/365 strobe lights, visible 30 miles from any shore, would cost at least $7,500/ installed kW, or at least $22.5 billion, if built in 2023 (more after 2023)
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Almost the entire supply of the Maine projects would be designed and made in Europe, then transported across the Atlantic Ocean, in European specialized ships, then unloaded at a new, $500-million Maine storage/pre-assembly/staging/barge-loading area, then barged to European specialized erection ships for erection of the floating turbines. The financing will be mostly by European pension funds.
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About 500 Maine people would have jobs during the erection phase
The other erection jobs would be by specialized European people, mostly on cranes and ships
About 200 Maine people would have long-term O&M jobs, using European spare parts, during the 20-y electricity production phase.
https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/news/governor-mills-signs-bill...
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The Maine people have much greater burdens to look forward to for the next 20 years, courtesy of the Governor Mills incompetent, woke bureaucracy that has infested the state government
The Maine people need to finally wake up, and put an end to the climate scare-mongering, which aims to subjugate and further impoverish them, by voting the entire Democrat woke cabal out and replace it with rational Republicans in 2024
The present course leads to financial disaster for the impoverished State of Maine and its people.
The purposely-kept-ignorant Maine people do not deserve such maltreatment
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Electricity Cost: Assume a $750 million, 100 MW project consists of foundations, wind turbines, cabling to shore, and installation at $7,500/kW.
Production 100 MW x 8766 h/y x 0.40, CF = 350,640,000 kWh/y
Amortize bank loan for $525 million, 70% of project, at 6.5%/y for 20 years, 13.396 c/kWh.
Owner return on $225 million, 30% of project, at 10%/y for 20 years, 7.431 c/kWh
Offshore O&M, about 30 miles out to sea, 8 c/kWh.
Supply chain, special ships, and ocean transport, 3 c/kWh
All other items, 4 c/kWh
Total cost 13.396 + 7.431 + 8 + 3 + 4 = 35.827 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (tax credits, 5-y depreciation, loan interest deduction) 17.913 c/kWh
Owner sells to utility at 17.913 c/kWh
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt
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NOTE: The above prices compare with the average New England wholesale price of about 5 c/kWh, during the 2009 - 2022 period, 13 years, courtesy of:
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Gas-fueled CCGT plants, with low-cost, low-CO2, very-low particulate/kWh
Nuclear plants, with low-cost, near-zero CO2, zero particulate/kWh
Hydro plants, with low-cost, near-zero-CO2, zero particulate/kWh
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Cabling to Shore Plus $Billions for Grid Expansion on Shore
A high voltage cable would be hanging from each unit, until it reaches bottom, say about 200 to 500 feet.
The cables would need some type of flexible support systemThere would be about 5 cables, each connected to sixty, 10 MW wind turbines, making landfall on the Maine shore, for connection to 5 substations (each having a 600 MW capacity, requiring several acres of equipment), then to connect to the New England HV grid, which will need $billions for expansion/reinforcement to transmit electricity to load centers, mostly in southern New England.
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The whole set-up is s super-expensive nightmare, the extent of which has been clear in Germany for the past 10 years and the UK for the past 5 years.
Both have “achieved” near-zero, real- growth GDP, the highest electricity prices in Europe, and stagnant real wages.
The W/S variable output, or too-little output, or too-much output, creates operational difficulties that become increasingly more challenging and expensive to counteract.
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Maine Folks Need Lower Energy Bills, Not Higher Energy Bills
The over-taxed, over-regulated, impoverished Maine people would buckle under such a heavy burden, while trying to
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The developer could not get financing and insurance at reasononable rates, so he had to fold, because Maine's woke government would never pay him 19 to 20 cents/kWh WHOLESALE for 20 years.
THE DYSFUNCTIONAL STATE OF MAINE
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-dysfunctional-stat...
By Willem Post
.The over-taxed, over-regulated, already-impoverished Maine people are super-screwed, trying to make ends meet in a near-zero, real growth Maine economy
The Maine economy has lots of low-tech/low-pay/low-benefit, bs jobs
The Maine economy has lots of woke, leftist bureaucrats
Screwed-over Mainers also have to pay for poverty-stricken, aliens of different cultures from all over, who illegally enter the US, a federal felony
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Those unvetted, illegal, often voting aliens from all-over:
- are the dregs of Third World countries, sent to Maine by their US-hating, leftist, woke governments, in cahoots with Soros/Biden-financed NGOs
- are getting free housing, free food, a never-empty credit card, free healthcare, free education and whatever other goodies they want. They mainly suck from the government tit
- have no skills, no training, no education, no modern industrial experience.
- will take low-tech/low-pay/low-benefit jobs away from screwed-over Mainers.
- are often good at crime, murder, rape, drug and human trafficking, and driving vehicles into merrymakers.- the tens of millions of incompatible, subversive, walk-ins would rather undermine, instead of fight for traditional European and US values and culture.
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Many millions of illegal aliens have to be shipped back where they came from, before they forever ruin the US, as they ruined Europe.
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Down-trodden Mainers often have to put up with the visual ugliness and noise of hundreds of windmills, that are often idle, because of too little wind year-round, and many thousands of acres of solar panels, that are often covered with snow and ice in winter; there is no solar at night.
.Down-trodden Mainers also have to endure the insults of the government-imposed mandate of having their girls competing with “boys” on girls’ teams, and “sharing” girl bathrooms and locker rooms, and losing their matches to the “boys”, all as required by ideology-nuts Governor Mills surrounded by her cabal of idiots and her ingrown clique of bureaucrat government-tit-suckers
.MAGA may lead to higher CO2 ppm in atmosphere, which would: 1) increase growth of flora and fauna all over the world, and 2) increase crop yields to feed 8 billion people. What is not to like?
Net zero by 2050 is an expensive suicide pact.
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Comment by Dan McKay on April 2, 2025 at 7:24am
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An expensive 5th grade experiment that should be terminated
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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