AUGUSTA, Maine — Central Maine Power Co. says it has reached a milestone in its project to build a 440-mile transmission line through the southern half of Maine.
CMP workers this week set the project’s 1,000th utility pole along a corridor in the town of Leeds. In all, the entire project will require about 5,000 new poles.
The poles are part of CMP’s new 345,000-volt transmission line that will stretch from Orrington to Eliot, doubling the capacity of the grid’s backbone.
CMP says the $1.4 billion project is the largest construction job ever undertaken in Maine. Completion is expected in 2015.
Guess who is paying for CMP to increase the capacity in order to send wind generated watts to southern New England.
I agree – it’s terrible that Maine has become a energy exporting state – with the lowest electricity costs in New England, that will become even cheaper this March when the new rate cuts kick in.
It would be better to import more energy and create jobs in Canada – or the Middle East.
Almost everywhere wind power is introduced into an area, new costly mammoth transmission is needed to handle its erratic sputtering output. An example here in Maine is the Maine Power Reliability Project (MPRP) also known as the $1.5 billion CMP upgrade.
Without such new transmission, the wind industry is essentially dead in the water. So how convenient that the Maine ratepayer gets to pick up the tab for such transmission projects.
Now you might be told that because Maine is only 8% of the New England grid, Maine ratepayers fund “only” 8% of the aforementioned $1.5 billion cost. But what ratepayers are not told is that they will pay 8% of similar wind-required new mammoth transmission projects across the grid. There have been cost estimates for these of up to $30 billion. So multiply Maine’s 8% times $30 billion and then divide by the number of ratepaying households and businesses.
As for Smart Meters, please see:
http://www.windtaskforce.org/page/smart-meters
The current grid was at capacity, this project will allow for expansion of energy production in the state. It also ads some redundancy to the grid to protect it in the event of a catastrophic failure. It was a federally mandated upgrade to the grid…
Good point, Son. It’s no secret that the power infrastructure has been maxed out for years, as proven by the great blackouts in the US and Canada in August 2003, and as discussed by energy experts across the nation during the past decade… at least no secret except to folks like PenobScot who apparently think that electricity magically appears from nowhere at the flip of a switch.
I always say Abracadabra right before I turn on the lights.
Power infrastructure in Maine has not been “maxed out for years”. We weren’t touched by blackouts. I’ve lived in Maine all my life and pay attention far more than the ordinary citizen.
Iberdrola CMP should have been doing local grid upgrades as part of a prudent, well planned and on-going capital improvement budget. There is no need for expansion to this trunk of 345 kv transmission except for overbuilding the grid to accommodate occasional surges of wind power when just the right conditions happen and those useless machines actually put out electricity. As for Mr. PenobScot, I know him and he is one wicked shahp Mainah. Maybe you should pay attention to what he says instead of being the cheerleader for the wind industry.
I pay attention to everything PenobScot says, since most of it is foolishness that requires a quick debunking, much like your own posts.
From the American Society of Civil Engineers:
“The U.S. generation and transmission system is at a critical point requiring substantial investment in new generation, investment to improve efficiencies in existing generation, and investment in transmission and distribution systems. The transmission and distribution system has become congested because growth in electricity demand and investment in new generation facilities have not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. This congestion virtually prohibits outages required for proper maintenance and can lead to system wide failures in the event of unplanned outages. Electricity demand has increased by about 25% since 1990 while construction of transmission facilities decreased by about 30 percent. While annual investment in new transmission facilities has generally declined or been stagnant during the last 30 years, there has been an increase in investment during the past 5 years. Substantial investment in generation, transmission, and distribution are expected over the next two decades and it has been projected that electric utility investment needs could be as much as $1.5 to $2 trillion by 2030. Some progress in grid reinforcement has been made since 2005, but public and government opposition, difficult permitting processes, and environmental requirements are often restricting the much-needed modernization.”
Wasn’t the focus on Maine and isn’t MPRP in Maine and isn’t the unnecessary proliferation of wind power projects destroying Maine’s Qaulity of Place?
I don’t believe that wind power is destroying Maine’s quality of place, and I don’t believe the contention that Maine’s infrastructure has escaped the lack of investment and necessary upgrades that the nation’s civil engineers are warning about.
Simplicity is not the name of the game in the “energy” business. CMP is “proof of the pudding.”
That must be why those “smart meters” caused my bill to go up almost 50% ? They sure are smart alright…like a fox.
This is nothing to cheer about. Maine people were left in the dark and hoodwinked on Iberdrola CMP’s MRRP project. Both the company and CMP failed miserably to notify abutting property owners that the seemingly innocuous little 115 kv line tucked in the nearby woods would have its corridor clear cut to the width of a football field and the lines replaced by highly dangerous and health threatening 345 kv lines. Most people would have come out of the woodwork in protest if they had gotten the facts, particularly relating to EMF.
Iberdrola CMP also played the game of dodging specifics and sold this expansion in vague generalities with buzzwords like “economic development” “being competitive” “keeping up with technology” “building reliability” “building for the future”. Well, our existing grid within Maine, with a few tweaks and upgrades would continue to serve a lightly populated state with very slow economic and population growth projections. In other words, expansion to 345 kv from Orrington to Elliot was never needed. Except for one thing: wind power.
At a PUC hearing in 2009, I challenged all the Iberdrola CMP bigwigs and their supporters and the PUC staff to be specific as to why this expansion was needed. What source of power generation do they foresee that needs this? My answer, which was neither confirmed nor denied, was for overbuilding the grid to transmit the fickle trickle of wind power generated by the planned industrial wind sites in rural Maine to the southern New England market. Overbuilding being necessary for those few days of the year when the wind conditions are sustained for long enough for the usually weakly productive or non-productive turbines to spin close to their design capacity.
Before the PUC vote to grant approval for MPRP, Iberdrola CMP never once mentioned the expansion being for the proliferation of industrial wind sites. They lied to the people of Maine. Every opportunity since PUC approval, Iberdrola CMP has touted this connection. So tag on more than a billion dollars for transmission to the huge bill to the taxpayers for subsidizing wind power. The wind scam just keeps going on and on and on, as we destroy the natural resources and the quality of place that makes Maine special.
If the development of civilization were left in your hands, we’d still be rubbing sticks together to light the campfire furnace in our cave homes.
nope, i have lived off the GRID for 12 years and I comment on the internet when ever I want. I do live without electric sucking machines so conveniently built by GE and others.
The transmission line in Roxbury Maine was built for WIND.
The cost of long distance electric transmission is likely to be fairly high–at least several cents per kWh, for wind energy transported over long distances
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/A-Look-at-Some-of-the-Obstacles-Facing-Wind-Energy-in-the-U.S.html
“The cost of long distance electric transmission is likely to be fairly high”
Even if what you say is true (define “fairly high”) you can heat homes with electricity, you don’t need to kowtow to OPEC to buy it, and you don’t need to subsidize a trillion dollar overseas military expeditionary force to protect it.
Also, your decision to live without modern technology is a personal choice and not necessarily a universal virtue.
fairly high is at least several cents a kWh.. add to that
1. Reliability Maine; 8% of $30 billion for Maine would be $2.4 billion in expense for Maine ratepayers. = rate hike = 2.400,000,000 / 560,000 =$4,2857 per household
2. Efficiency Maine , a program that places a surtax on everyone’s electric bill. That’s an increase = rate hike.
3.Add a cent of stranded cost(biomass 1980’s) to your per kilowatt hour charges—‘cha-ching’.
4. Shutting Maine Yankee before its expected lifetime added one cent to two cents to your bill–“cha-cjing’
5. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) pushed by the NRCM——add another cent.–‘cha-ching’
6. Capacity payments, the payments made to standby-on-demand industrial and commercial electricity producers, yep, pushed by these environmentalists. One cent more—‘cha-ching’.
7. Finally, long-term contracts to the wind industry and conservation charges lobbied for by NRCM employees—another cent, ‘cha-ching’.
“Reliability Maine; 8% of $30 billion for Maine ”
1. First, $30 billion is a number made up by anti-wind activists and is significantly higher than all other estimates that I’ve been able to find on the web regarding the cost of upgrades. Second, nobody said the upgrade required by our infrastructure as described by the nation’s civil engineers would be free. However, even if your inflated cost estimates are correct, the total cost per household would be less than ten bucks a month if the current upgrades are sufficient to handle demand for as long as the most recent significant upgrades of the 1970s handled demand. By the way, the CBO estimates that the cost of keeping a US military force in Iraq over the past decade to protect the oil supply (President Bush’s stated reason, not mine) is roughly $6,300 per US citizen.
2. Efficiency Maine adds a surtax to everyone’s electric bill, true. It also offers rebates and loans to citizens and small businesses which acquire or seek to acquire technology that increases the efficiency of their electricity usage. Are you for or against increasing the efficiency of Maine’s electricity usage?
3. I admit I know nothing about stranded biomass costs.
4. Shutting Maine Yankee was a decision made by the entire citizenry of Maine. Nonetheless, as has been pointed out on these blogs before, Mainers are still paying an exorbitant cost for storing the radioactive poisons that Maine Yankee produced, even though Maine Yankee is not producing one kilowatt hour of electricity now. Perhaps it is best that we stopped producing the radioactive waste when we did. Meanwhile, advanced societies like Germany are steering away from nukes as well, in favor of cleaner renewable alternatives such as wind.
5. RGGI… love it or hate it, the RGGI is on track to reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector by ten percent within the next 7 years, and many people would argue that this advancement is worth the penny that you covet.
6. Capacity payments… aren’t you the one who talks about how our grid system needs standby capacity in case the wind doesn’t blow? The fact is that the backup capacity would exist even if there were not a single windmill in Maine, because backup is necessary for ALL forms of generation. Chalk up that penny to the realities of flipping the switch and getting the electricity that ratepayers demand.
7. Long term contracts to the wind industry… I’m unable to verify that this charge is more than an anti-wind fantasy. But in any case, many Mainers believe (upwards of 80 percent according to the last Critical Insights poll — which by the way is the polling team that accurately predicted the LePage photo-finish victory in the gubernatorial election) that any renewable generation which steers us away from fossil fuel fired generation is worth the nominal investment. The fact that every lake in Maine is polluted with mercury emissions from coal fired power plants to our west is one reason why Mainers might want a change.
“that any renewable generation which steers us away from fossil fuel fired generation is worth the nominal investment”
No No No and especially WIND turbines…go to China see the mess..
before hook up tp grid wind generators burn deisel to test them.
Is that all you can come up with is a sarcastic remark? BTW, I made an error in the 3rd sentence, it should have been ” Both the company and PUC failed miserably to notify abutting property owners . . .”
The remark is not meant to be sarcastic, any moreso than your comments about “non-responsive CMP bigwigs.”
Also, in response to your claim that people were left in the dark and hoodwinked by the upgrade: If I’m not mistaken, CMP sponsored well-publicized meetings that were available to every community which might be impacted by the upgrade, in which the public and the press and activists like yourself were invited to ask any and all questions they might have about the impact of the upgrade on private and public property throughout the powerline corridor pathway.