Huge Clean Energy RFP Issued Today by Maine PUC

And this one is a double-wammy!

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Wind developers are high-fiving today. An RFP was issued this morning by the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for a legislature-mandated transmission corridor that seeks to bridge the gap between Aroostook and the New England grid. While this is momentous, it’s not merely another transmission corridor case. This 12 month RFP is the cake AND the frosting too, because it also requests proposals for renewable generation in Aroostook.

Even as the CMP/NECEC war rages on, this is one to monitor. 

The only scalable mountain wind power sites remaining in Maine are Downeast and Upnorth, especially Aroostook and upper Somerset Counties. Between the Expedited Area opt-outs and the bevy of local wind ordinances, Big Wind has few options south of Kibby. This is made even more fraught because folks in the Kibby/Jackman/Forks/Canada Highway region are clearly on record after their tenacious 2021 defense of their "pristine woods" against the CMP/NECEC corridor. There might be an opportunity or two for small boutiquey projects like the new one in Roxbury, but for the most part, Western Maine is played out.  

Aroostook is the real frontier. Once the long-awaited transmission connection is in place, if the industry wants, they could throw up turbines not only west of Route 1, but west of Route 11, west of the Allagash, west of the St. John... all the way to the Canadian border... from Madawaska and Fort Kent down through Clayton Lake, Daaquaam, Big Six, maybe as far as Hammond and Prentiss toward Boundary Bald Mountain. 

There's nobody there to care, not even NRCM. The Telos, Reality, Oxbow, Saint Juste and Blanchette Roads are all perfect pathways for turbines. If the New England states - including Maine – continue to seek clean energy procurements, this is where big wind can/will go big. (This also explains why Big Wind joined Oil and Natural Gas generation plants, NRCM, et al in the anti- NECEC coalition.)

EDP and others have plans (with land leases) for 1400 to 2000 MW in The County. There's enough space up there for 3000 MW or more. The (redacted) record in the MPRP more than a decade ago revealed the mammoth plans that First Wind and its insidious revenant descendants had/have for Northern Maine. The Oakfield project pretty much tapped out Northern Maine. Big Solar is also interested. For a decade they've all been losing bids in southern New England clean energy procurement RFPs because of their inability to deliver.

As we say, "if wind energy is the heist, transmission is the getaway car." They've all been waiting and pushing for a way to get the electricity to market, and now it's finally happening. 

How is it happening? Look to Augusta.

Senate President Troy Jackson can get pretty much anything he wants written into law. His recently-enacted bill (LD 1710, An Act To Require Prompt and Effective Use of the Renewabl...) was no less significant than the original heinous Wind Act itself. And unlike CMP’s NECEC, which legislators of both parties overwhelmingly oppose, Jackson's corridor (at least to-date) is a slam dunk created/enabled by sycophantic legislators.

Ask yourself how this looks process familiar:

Jackson’s after-deadline "emergency" bill (the normal deadline to submit bills was back in December) was printed and released to the public on Friday May 14, a few weeks before 2021 adjournment. Because committees were done with their work and Augusta was scrambling to wrap up its remaining business for the year, they waived the 2-week public hearing notice period. The Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee (EUT) public hearing was two business days later, on Tuesday May 18. It gets better: it passed the EUT committee with only one NO vote (Representative Wadsworth). When the EUT committee reported the bill out to the legislature, the legislation leapfrogged the perennial late-session log jam of hundreds of bills, and within 24 hours it sailed through the House and Senate without a word of debate, or a single recorded vote. Unanimous. Under the hammer. Nothing to see here folks. 

Starting today, the PUC case is open for bids and public comments.

Here is the link to view the new Case File

Here is the link where you can submit comments and ask to be on the email notice list.

For details about how this case arose, how it will quickly proceed, and how much discretion the PUC is given, you should read this Notice of Inquiry the PUC sent out a few months ago.

For a truly startling glimpse at how much energy infrastructure could be coming to Maine, peruse the 32 interested party responses to the above Notice.

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Comment by Dan McKay on November 17, 2021 at 12:09pm

Vermont should consider transmitting Canadian hydro into NE and consider Maine as " a bad actor "  to the other states in ISO-NE. 

Comment by Willem Post on November 17, 2021 at 11:36am

PUC maliciously issued an RFP for a transmission line and all the wind-crazy nuts, eager to grasp at subsidies, flock to it, because the line would provide them the highway to southern NE markets, and sell their wind outputs at high prices, kept low, by means of over-generous federal and state subsidies.

A few multi-millionaire folks benefit big-time, everyone else gets screwed.

Maine’s Democracy “at work”

Comment by Richard McDonald/Saving Maine on November 17, 2021 at 8:29am

This is the same project that CMP/Emera bid into a MA renewable RFP back in 2015 - they called it the MREI - ME Renewable Energy Interconnect. Per that proposal, the engineering had been completed. corridor parameters were set, leases had been negotiated. At that time, the price tag was estimated at $500M. CMP/Versant have a significant competitive advantage - the RFP is window dressing.

Comment by Dan McKay on November 17, 2021 at 7:31am
Comment by Dan McKay on November 17, 2021 at 7:25am

Heavily indebted in the unreliable electrical production from wind and solar power projects throughout the state, and having rejected a reliable electrical producing project, essentially stabbing Canada and the rest of New England in the back, Maine will endure a lot of pain if the rejection of NECEC comes back to haunt their association and dependence they have with across the border electrical generation.

Maine , also being the one state that recognizes biomass as class 1 renewable, thereby keeping REC costs to Maine ratepayers far below REC costs in the other New England states, could find itself burning corridors of cheap, chip wood forests to avoid the dreaded blackouts when the States/Country they stabbed in the back decide to revoke delivery of life sustaining energy.

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on November 17, 2021 at 5:54am
This sounds awful for aroostook just as we had a record breaking summer of people flocking to our mostly pristine county..I am truly saddened
Comment by Kenneth Capron on November 17, 2021 at 12:56am

WOW. Very interesting piece of legislation. Transmission lines contracted separate from renewable generation. Allows multiple bidders on specific parts of the project(s). Square miles of solar and dozens of turbines. I hope they hold an informational session. Long lead time - proposal due next November.

I'm in.

Comment by Art Brigades on November 16, 2021 at 5:14pm
PUC isn’t issuing the RFP maliciously. They’re doing what the new law tells them to do.
Comment by Art Brigades on November 16, 2021 at 3:06pm

To read the NOTICE OF INQUIRY, the above link might not work. Click here and scroll to Item Number 2:

https://tinyurl.com/dwduetcc 

 

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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