Peaks Island wind plan abandoned, Portland waterfront turbine not producing

Lets not lose sight of what we sell here in Casco Bay -- Casco Bay. Tourism is our life blood don't put wind towers in and ruin it. What's more, I have long thought that CMP should knock down that huge smoke stack that tourists must see and that likely drives people away from real estate looking at Cousins Island. They wouldn't do that in Northern California or in Eastern Long Island - they'd get a diminutive smoke stack or elect not to erect an eyesore on some of the worlds most lovely geography. Down with the smoke stack!

I wish that all the Forecaster readers would take notice regarding the conclusion that there is inadequate wind on Peak's Island to justify the expense of putting up a utility scale wind turbine. Due to a relentless propaganda campaign by the wind industry, when people are casually asked the open-ended question "Do you support wind power?" far too many people have never looked into the multitude of issues related to wind and reply yes. The wind industry, an industry that wouldn't exist without huge Taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, mandates, and the Enron-inspired market for RECs, is counting on simplistic support to continue to promote this folly.

Kudos to PEAT and people like Sam Saltonstall to say "It doesn't work" and not try to pretend otherwise. So, here is the importance of this PEAT study and decision: The wind industry never, ever reveals any meteorological data that is gathered to justify their huge, sprawling industrial wind sites. They know the projects would never be approved, as they would never produce enough electricity to pay for themselves ($4+ million per turbine) nor offset enough carbon or greenhouse gas emissions to justify them environmentally due to an industrial wind sites own huge carbon footprint and the need for spinning reserve of fossil fuel plants to back up every nameplate megawatt of wind.

Here in Maine, the Baldacci administration forced through an unknowing legislature in the rush to end the short session in April 2008 a heinous give away to the wind industry, the Expedited Wind Permitting statute. That has opened the door to an onslaught of destruction to Maine's uplands for industrial wind sites. If you look at the wind maps produced by the National Renewable Energy Lab for Maine, most of the areas where industrial wind sites are being developed is classified as "poor" to "marginal" wind potential, far less than the map indicates is the wind potential along the coast around Peaks Island. I guarantee you that there is far steadier wind resource on Peaks Island than on the top of Rollins Mt. in Lincoln which now has 18 wind turbines, each 389 feet tall, which is nearly twice the height of the tallest building in Maine, Portland's Franklin Towers.

So why does a place like Lincoln Lakes with "poor" wind potential have a wind project encompassing 40 turbines, sprawled across 7 miles of blasted away, leveled, and clearcut ridges? Why did this project get put in just 15 miles from a similar project at Stetson Mt. that has never produced more than 22% of its capacity in any quarter in which it has operated (FERC data)? Because what the wind industry calls a "Wind Farm" is just a "Subsidy Plantation". Wind power is a useless scam, the most expensive and least effective form of electricity generation being foisted upon taxpayers and ratepayers by misguided "green" zealots.

Please get more educated about the huge negative issues regarding wind power and get involved with the efforts to save Maine's mountains and uplands from devastation by the folly of industrial wind power. You can start by visiting the Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power website www.windtaskforce.org and the website of Friends of Maine's Mountains http://www.friendsofmainesmountains.org Both websites have numerous links to the local groups involved with proposed or developed projects in Maine as well as other useful links to discover the knowledge the wind industry doesn't want you to know. PEAT found out at Peaks Island and we owe them a debt of gratitude for having the integrity to not go ahead with a project that is not feasible and to share the information gained.

The "technical glitch" that Mr. Hayes refers to is the Laws of Physics. Every "experiment" with wind power in this state has failed miserably due to the fact that wind turbines are so inefficient that they barely produce any measurable amount of energy and typically fail permanently long before they've reached a break even pay back point. Wind power developers/sales people are this century's version of the "sanke oil salesmen" of years gone by. The state's taxpayers footed the bill for the miserable failure of the large scale turbine at UMPI. The production data is so miserable that they closed off on line access to the data because it was such an embarassment. The municipal turbines at Kittery and Saco failed totally. The grid scale wind power projects foisted on this state by (primarily) out of state and foreign developers have produced only 18% of their rated output. It's the same story repeated over and over and over again, whether it's in Maine, New York or anywhere else. It's all nothing more than a large scale scam that feeds on good people's sensibilities towards "green" power production and would dry up and go away almost immediately if the Federal Government chooses not to renew the outlandish subsidies these developers are paid to erect this projects. Wind power of any scale cannot be justified if a cost/benefit analysis is completed. It doesn't work! Look to other proven forms of renewable energy such as biomass and hydro for teh solutions to our long term energy problems. Wind power is a joke!

I hope they get the glitch out of DiMillo's experiment and it works.