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Exactly. I had this vision of locally owned, perhaps municipal, power generation, utilizing the peoples own resource-water. It will never happen.
This happened in Maine but it took some fighting. Madison Paper had a hydro damn that produced power, along with boilers at the paper mill. They approached the town and said "we have excess power and we are willing to sell it to the citizens of Madison." The town wanted it, but the PUC said no as the towns grid was owned by Central Maine Power. That was easy to fix. The town purchased the grid for their town and they have the cheapest electric rates in the state now.
It can be done, and there are island communities that do this as well here in Maine, but I do admit this is probably a rare occurrence overall.
I must be missing something. News reports indicate the developer is a small Portland Company. None of the major developers I know would bother with a three turbine plant. It's way too small to be economic.
This is where local information beats anything you can find on the internet. The landowner that these three windmills are on, has a son who works for the Windmill owner down in Portland. Of course its just an office with 2 desks and a phone with "private investors". I'm not saying this is a scandal of some sort...it's probably not, but in today's society you got to go beyond just what you find online. Companies often have very deep, and far reaching roots.
As for the windmills...you are right, this is just the first of many. There are 5-6 different windmill sites in development here. Freedom was just the first of 28 proposed for this county alone.
This happened in Maine but it took some fighting. Madison Paper had a hydro damn that produced power, along with boilers at the paper mill. They approached the town and said "we have excess power and we are willing to sell it to the citizens of Madison." The town wanted it, but the PUC said no as the towns grid was owned by Central Maine Power. That was easy to fix. The town purchased the grid for their town and they have the cheapest electric rates in the state now.
It can be done, and there are island communities that do this as well here in Maine, but I do admit this is probably a rare occurrence overall.
This is really intriguing. I have always heard the argument from the power companies that kilowatt generation MUST go into the NE grid at large and not segmented for direct local usage. I know this must be based on contractual commitments and profit margins and not electrical theory. So any precedent for partitioning off the grid is exactly what I think we should be aiming for in order to incorporate more local points of generation. Maine exports millions of kilowatt power to southern NE states that do more than their share of the consuming.
In addition I happen to know that the current technology of electrical distribution always involves a certain amount of "stray electricity" that simply is not harnessed. Most substation maintenance personnel deal with this regularly. We as residents deserve the cost benefit of our ample hydro power.The indirect benefit would be cheaper power available for commercial entities.
Many of the mid size hydro plants in upper NY and New England are owned and operated by a company called BRASCAN, standing for Brazil and Canada. Look them up. Owning and not using the facilities is a way of maintaining control of the cost of operation information so the company’s rate requests will not face any challenges at PUC rate hearings.
I am leftly considered a political/economic leftist. Given my bias please, consider why does New England and the Northeast have the highest power prices in the country when our generation, transmission and generation resources are mostly privately owned. I would think the private market system would allow the competition that should provide us with the lowest prices. Why does the TVA with the extensive government ownership of the generators, transmission and distribution facilities have some of the lowest power prices. Just what is the advantage of private ownership of a natural monopoly to us as consumers?
It's got nothing much to do with private versus public ownership because both your private and public utilities are regulated monopolies. TVA has low costs, but so do the Southern Company and Duke Power. Central Maine Power has high costs, but so does Houlton Water Company. Old dirty coal fired plants produce "cheap" electricity along with a lot of environmental damage. TVA, Southern and Duke all operate a lot of coal.
This is where local information beats anything you can find on the internet. The landowner that these three windmills are on, has a son who works for the Windmill owner down in Portland. Of course its just an office with 2 desks and a phone with "private investors". I'm not saying this is a scandal of some sort...it's probably not, but in today's society you got to go beyond just what you find online. Companies often have very deep, and far reaching roots.
As for the windmills...you are right, this is just the first of many. There are 5-6 different windmill sites in development here. Freedom was just the first of 28 proposed for this county alone.
My information sources are a little deeper than an Internet site. Local information is useful, but what locals "know" to be true is often just town gossip, with little basis in fact. The overhead associated with two to three people is way more than a three turbine site can manage.
Hydro is a good clean option for power. But it requires a lot of environmental mitigation for fish migration and flood concerns. So the permitting process is a challenge to say the least. They are not cheap projects either.
Hydro is a good clean option for power. But it requires a lot of environmental mitigation for fish migration and flood concerns. So the permitting process is a challenge to say the least. They are not cheap projects either.
These are aspects that already have been dealt with in Maine. There are several environmentally friendly hydro systems here and it is constantly improving as a result of conservation pressures. Our local problems have less to do with actual geologic and hydraulic concerns as power distribution litigation.
It's got nothing much to do with private versus public ownership because both your private and public utilities are regulated monopolies. TVA has low costs, but so do the Southern Company and Duke Power. Central Maine Power has high costs, but so does Houlton Water Company. Old dirty coal fired plants produce "cheap" electricity along with a lot of environmental damage. TVA, Southern and Duke all operate a lot of coal.
This is probably splitting hairs, but coal fired power plants are #2 as far as effeciency goes. Natural gas power generation plants are actually the cheapest
As for Central Maine Power...I am not sure how they rate as they simply provide power delivery to many of us Mainers. That is a separate fee from the power I purchase. It used to be 10 cents a KW for power, and 6½ cents for delivery, but its changing with the tumbling economy. I will have to check my bill to see what it is.
My information sources are a little deeper than an Internet site. Local information is useful, but what locals "know" to be true is often just town gossip, with little basis in fact. The overhead associated with two to three people is way more than a three turbine site can manage.
Not any more. The Bingham Dam used to have 15 workers operating that hydro dam but now they are down to 3 maintenance workers with all controls being done from the dam owner in Florida. The same thing can be accomplished with windmills. Heck they change the oil in the gear boxes every 2 years. These new windmills are very low maintenance.
The green credits is not something dreamed up. Its fact.
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