Maine wind training program is struggling to attract students

"I think if you look at the interest in wind, wind power, I think people are still skeptical that that has a bright future," says NMCC President Tim Crowley. The state's changing political landscape, he says, also may have affected interest in the program.

Some industry observers say interest has shifted toward solar. And Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association, says there just hasn't been a lot of wind energy development in the state in recent years.

Maine Public | By Patty Wight
Published September 22, 2022 at 5:21 PM EDT

It's early September, the second week of classes at Northern Maine Community College in Presque Isle, and a lab day for the wind power technology program.

Nineteen-year-old Maxwell Osborne of Waldoboro is building an electrical circuit that includes a light and a switch. By the time Osborne graduates in the spring, he'll be ready to climb hundreds of feet up towers to maintain and repair wind turbines. But first, he needs to learn basic electrical skills under the guidance of instructor Wayne Kilcollins.

And he has his undivided attention, because he's the only student in the class.

"I like it," Osborne says. "It's fun. I learn better when there's less people because then I don't feel like awkward about other people."

Osborne may like it, but it's not great for the school — or for Maine's renewable energy workforce.

When Maine's first wind energy project was built in Mars Hill more than a decade ago, it ushered in a new era for renewable energy — along with high hopes for jobs. To meet the demand for wind technicians, Northern Maine Community College launched the state's first — and still only — comprehensive training program. It started with a bang: nearly three dozen students enrolled. But in the years since, enrollment has plummeted.

"If I had 50 students right now, graduating in the spring, they'd have jobs within New England," says instructor Wayne Killcollins.

Kilcollins helped create the program in 2009 and wrote one of the first textbooks on the subject. He says he gets calls and emails every month from developers around the country looking to hire technicians.

"Right now in Maine, we do not have enough technicians, enough trained technicians for the jobs that are out there," he says.

Wind turbine technician is the second-fastest growing occupation in the U.S., behind nurse practitioners, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Within the next decade, employment opportunities in the fields are expected to grow by 44%, with roughly 2,000 new openings each year.

The projections are positive, so why is enrollment at Northern Maine Community College so low?

"I think if you look at the interest in wind, wind power, I think people are still skeptical that that has a bright future," says NMCC President Tim Crowley. The state's changing political landscape, he says, also may have affected interest in the program.

"So we thought it would be up and down," says Crowley. "And it has been, as the political winds change, no pun intended."

Some industry observers say interest has shifted toward solar. And Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association, says there just hasn't been a lot of wind energy development in the state in recent years.

"When wind was really burgeoning, you know, five, six, seven, eight years ago, you saw a lot more interest in the program, because people were hearing about it, 'Oh, my friend is working in that industry. 'Oh, you see a project being built.' And so I think that is really the outcome. You see an industry has stagnated. And so therefore, the workforce interest has as well," he says.

And NMCC school officials acknowledge they may need to do more to make potential students aware of the program.

"In my own experience, I can tell you, I didn't know it was there," says Tyler Arndt.

Arndt is originally from Presque Isle and remembers driving by the wind farm on Mars Hill countless times. But he never thought about the jobs that are required to keep the turbines going. He enrolled in NMCC's wind technician training program in 2014 almost on a lark.

"When I decided that I was gonna go back to school, I picked the thing that sounded the coolest."

As it turned out, Arndt stumbled into a career that he loves. He says he got job offers within days of graduating. He started out in Kansas, eventually returned to Maine, and now works as a lead technician at a site just north of Ellsworth. Every day is different, he says. The views from the top of a turbine rival those atop Mt. Katahdin. And he believes in the mission of his work.

"I wanted to be a part of shifting the U.S. electrical grid from fossil fuels to renewables," says Arndt. "But you know, the renewable part isn't for everybody. So, just as a technical machine, it's super cool."

Meanwhile, Northern Maine Community College president Tim Crowley says the school is partnering with Maine Maritime Academy to develop a training program for offshore turbines so graduates will be able to work both on land and at sea. It will also allow students to be trained in either Presque Isle or Bucksport.

"Renewable energy is so important to Maine, and we have all the pieces," says Crowley. "We need to take advantage of that and build that. So that's why this program continues. Because we know that the future of renewable energy in Maine is very important to our economic development, and it's also very important to our climate. And so we're focused on this."

Wind power technology instructor Wayne Kilcollins says he's sometimes asked what it's like to work on wind turbines two or three hundred feet in the air.

"It's no different than working on a factory floor," he says. "It's just you get the better view in town. "

https://www.mainepublic.org/business-and-economy/2022-09-22/wind-tu...

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Comment by Penny Gray on September 23, 2022 at 6:48pm

There's a HUGE disconnect between reality and the Big Green Myth.  China is laughing at us and so is Russia.

Comment by Brad Blake on September 23, 2022 at 6:13pm
How ironic that we were fed the lie that these projects were going to swamp the state with good paying jobs and now they can't find anyone to train for the few jobs that are actually available. I shed no tears! Maybe they should pass out flyers in Jay, where Janet Mills' dreadful business climate has closed down one of the few remaining legacy paper mills. Hundreds of prospective trainees there!
Wind power has never lived up to the hype and never will in spite of the overwhelmingly favorable subsidies, tax credits, TIFs, mandates, and pandering politicians pushing it. And, oh yes, a good bit of corruption along the way!
Comment by Penny Gray on September 23, 2022 at 7:56am

It took me two years to get a solar/wind technician out to my neighbors place to troubleshoot his off-grid system.  The problem was with the inverter, the fix was simple and he now has power again.  The technician was working at Loring AFB installing a huge solar "farm" and says nobody wants to work in the alternative energy field of wind and solar.  Kids don't want to work anyway, and established electricians are wary of it.  I have another neighbor with a wind turbine that hasn't turned in a couple years because he can't get anyone to come look at it.  Working on four hundred foot tall wind turbines is very different than working on a factory floor, especially when you're up there and they catch fire.

Comment by Long Islander on September 22, 2022 at 9:51pm

How's that UMPI wind turbine disaster going Maine media? Funny you didn't touch this in the story. That laughing stock turbines was supposed to be THE training facility.

 

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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