N.E. Clean Power Connect in Maine - Should we care ?

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I take that report with a "grain of salt" given the graphic conveniently does not appear to show the existing two windfarms and associated power line right of way, RT 27 and RT 201 along with the extensive logging road networks in the region. This has frequently been a point of contention where outside the region groups imagine pristine wilderness where it doesn't exist and has not existed for about 150 years. Might be great for fundraising and selling the "wilderness" concept but can lead to confusion when somebody does something easy like zoom in over the area with google earth. Do the same thing up in Hydro Quebec hydroelectric system watershed and you will see far more virgin wilderness on a landscape level that is far more at risk than impacting industrial forestland in western maine. To give you an idea of scale, from upper reaches of the ponded watershed to the point where the LeGrande River goes into James Bay spans the same length as starting at the NY Mass border and ending at the Canadian Border in far eastern Maine.

Given that there is permitted project in place with far lower impact sitting on the shelf in VT, I do not support this project as its basically a large foreign owned utility rolling the dice that they can build it cheaper on the backs of financially desperate states. Way too many parallels with NP although its obvious the SPNHF and their partners had a far better strategy going in on NP and that also seemed to keep a few environmental groups from selling out like they did in Maine.
 
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Got this in my Northern Pass alerts:

statewide-poll-shows-strong-opposition-cmp-corridor

Rather surprised me to be honest, as most of my perceived opposition to NP was it running through some prime recreation country and built-up areas in the Great North Woods. Where the new corridor in Maine is going in does not strike me as nearly that level of recreation, nor is there much for development there (meaning, opposition due to NIMBY is really not a cause). My gut tells me it's a lot of "don't mar my state for Massachusetts' sake," and when I look at what appears to me to be only a few hydro and wind projects currently in place within Mass., I can understand that. I think this was also the foundation of some of the NP opposition, but there were plenty of others as well.

Or maybe it's just Mainers really love their woods. Don't blame 'em for that, either. :cool:
 
Wow, I am also surprised. It was definitely a slow burn as when the project first was brought up, folks in southern maine could care less. The governor is in a tough position, she is from the area which is economically depressed and Maine's biggest contractor is banking on the work. She extracted extra scraps before she bought in.

Mainers on occasion really piss off the establishment. If they hadnt, Sugarloaf would have had a even bigger ski area across the valley on Bigelow. Bigelow was a project that could not be stopped that was stopped by a citizens initiative. The big bucks and influence in Maine is in the three southern counties and usually they do not pay much attention to what is going on in the woods. If the right campaign gets them interested in the project that can swing the decision.
 
I initially had the same suspicion but looking at the poll and its supporting documents its either a very deep elaborate hoax or far more likely a legit survey despite the unfortunate date they selected to release it. Click on the reference documents and they all seem legit as well as the questions. The polling firm is real and has presence in the state. Generally in hoax situation a legit third party would not be referenced.

Some could argue that there is slight push aspect on the statement in section 3 as the section while opponents claim the project would damage Maine’s environment, harm renewable energy companies, and primarily benefit residents of Massachusetts. evokes some hot buttons to a typical Mainer that might agree to participate in the poll. Compared to Proponents claim the project would create jobs, benefit Maine communities, and help protect the environment IMO the proponents claims tend to be warm and fuzzy using "create" "benefit" and "help". The use of "damage", "harm" and particularly "primarily benefit residents of Massachusetts" have far more potential to evoke stronger opinions. Looking at the responses to the before question (3) and the after question (4) knocked a few fence sitters over to the opposition side.

It would be interesting to see the results if the same survey was conducted in NH with "PSNH of New Hampshire DBA Eversource" was substituted for CMP. Currently I expect CMP has a far worse reputation from their billing "disaster" that occurred last year that just doesn't seem to die. CMPs media effort at responding to the issue was a disaster in and of itself, thus I expect the average Mainer assumes anything that CMP says is inherently tainted to the point where there are currently largely symbolic effort to pull their franchise rights and create a non profit state run power company (which would not end well).
 
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Hammerdee said:
But wouldn't 2,000 MW or 3,000 MW of renewable energy be better than 1,000 MW? I hope all three of the projects proposed for NE get built. Iceland, Norway, and Costa Rica are the only countries that have achieved an almost 100% level of renewable energy, and all rely heavily on hydroelectric generation.
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I agree with Hammerdee. We need to reduce energy consumption from carbon-based fuels now, and every way we can. Global warming is the issue facing the world at the moment, and while some members want to talk about the politics of it, and whether it's going to get through or not, this is a hiker's forum, and I see no reason why the politics of it can be discussed but the inconvenient truth of global warming cannot.
 
A new variation for getting HQ power down to Maine came up overnight. The concept is to use the existing Portland Montreal Pipeline (PPL) from Montreal to Portland Maine to install a buried HVDC line in its place. Note for disclosure purposes my driveway is on the Portland Pipeline right of way so I am quite familiar with it. The Portland Pipeline is actually three pipelines one of which is abandoned that was initially built in WW2 and expanded later to carry crude oil from Portland Maine to refineries in Montreal. With the shift in energy resources in Canada, the refineries it supplied in Montreal are closing down and last thing I knew it was underutilized or possibly out of service. The company that owns it is maintaining it as an asset and they at one point looked at converting it to natural gas and more recently studied what it would cost to convert it to pump tar sand oil from western Canada to the harbor in South Portland Maine. The natural gas play ended up that PPL allowed the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGTS) to share the right of way from Gorham NH to somewhere near the Portland area but that would not preclude adding a HVDC line in place of one or more of the oil pipelines. One of the tactics used to apply pressure to Canada to stop tar sand oil extraction is bottle up the avenues to exporting it and this option along with several pipeline attempts the west have been opposed. The city of South Portland has banned this use and there have been various court battles against its use for pumping shale oil from Canada.

Therefore there is already a cut, maintained and permitted right of way in place that is economically stranded that in the opinion of a state legislature in Maine should be investigated prior to cutting a new swath through Northwestern Maine. Technically its could be a solution to getting some power down from HQ but the length of underground cable means higher costs and lower electrical throughput. Practically its cuts both Eversource in NH and CMP in Maine out of the loop and both parties were planning to make their profit as "landlord" for the power being transmitted over the lines. In this case my guess is a PMPL power line would be a merchant line where some other entity would be the landlord. This obviously would be opposed by the host utilities as its hundreds of millions of potentially non regulated profits out of their pocket. Note that PMPL is not the advocate for this project at this point, this is coming from left field by a state legislator in Maine. I expect some would feel its a delay tactic for the Clean Power Connect project. PMPL has been crying poverty to the towns in NH that host it and demanding tax concessions so I don't think any of the towns would object if a new power line went in with potentially much higher revenues. I personally would not care and would rather have HVDC than crude oil buried in the ground plus I may get new driveway and possible a check as the right of way deed is specific to crude oil pipelines.

As an aside, given all the PR in New England about New England running out of natural gas, the PNGTS is capable of increasing its flow by reportedly 30% directly to the main natural gas distribution system for New England. The reason it has not been upgraded is no entity wants to pay for the upgrade which involves putting 4 or 5 compressor stations along the line. it probably one of the fastest ways to increase gas capacity to the region but it doesn't line up with the much more profitable plan of forcing a new pipeline to be run up from the Marcellus gas fields in PA up to New England.
 
B the Hiker said:
I agree with Hammerdee. We need to reduce energy consumption from carbon-based fuels now, and every way we can. Global warming is the issue facing the world at the moment, and while some members want to talk about the politics of it, and whether it's going to get through or not, this is a hiker's forum, and I see no reason why the politics of it can be discussed but the inconvenient truth of global warming cannot.
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I think Peakbagger's point is that you should start a separate thread if you want to discuss renewable energy vs. fossil fuel. This thread is about status and updates regarding the CPC project. But I defer to the moderators.
 
I agree, we should stay on topic as both are worthy of their own threads. One is informative, the other is a debate. I agree, and forgive me for wandering off topic, we can do more to reduce consumption and feel it is wise to decentralize production but let's not repeat something stupid like CFLs which are now quickly outdated and a mercury problem ... and I'm replacing all my bulbs with LEDs just as fast as all those free CFLs burn out!
 
On Friday, I sat on the top of Speckled Mountain in Peru, ME thinking about this discussion. From that vantage point, I could see 5 wind farms and a significant power line right of way, in the foreground, running south of Rumford. The wind farms populate the ridgelines while the power lines tend to run in the valleys. I have to say, the wind farms are more offensive to my view than the power lines.

In New England, we are far away from being able to rely on renewable energy as our sole power source. I have been watching the ISO New England fuel mix for the last week or so, the % of renewable power only represents about 10%, on average, of the sources used to generate electricity in New England. Further, of the generation sources considered to be renewable, we are burning refuse & wood to generate 50% - 75% of that segment. Hydro power has represented about 10% on average of the energy sources for New England over the last week. Nuclear & natural gas each represent 40% of the fuel mix (on average) I believe that we need to bring hydro power from Quebec if we want to make a short term impact and reduce the fuel sources that are creating greenhouse gasses.
You can see the ISO New England current generation sources here: https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts/guest-hub?p_p_id=fuelmixgraph_WAR_isoneportlet_INSTANCE_WQKSMAX9RozI&p_p_lifecycle=0&p_p_state=pop_up&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-3&p_p_col_pos=2&p_p_col_count=5

Take a look at satellite images of the Maine forest; pristine is not a word that I would use to describe the forest as a whole-it is a working forest. To complain about an additional power line right of way seems short sighted to me. Someday, we may be able to rely on solar & wind generation, but not without good battery storage solutions and a whole lot of conservation/efficiency improvements. For the near term, New England needs power sources that do not emit greenhouse gasses.
 
The problem is as currently configured the project is more sleight of hand fossil then it is hydro. It depends where you draw the boundaries. If you draw the boundary at the Mass border, then yes the CPC (as well as NP) was displacing fossil in Mass and filling in the void from Pilgrim. Now expand the boundary and include Quebec and what is coming over the line is not necessarily new "clean hydro", its actually existing hydro that is being rerouted from other HQ customers and fossil generation. In the HQ system there is fossil generation including some underutilized large gas fired power plants.There is no prohibition in the current proposed contract from HQ firing up gas fired generation to service HQ customers to free up existing hydro to sell to New England at a premium. When HQ had been asked to modify the contract to assure that the game of "three card monte" is not used they claim they can not support that concept. Right now its a "Not in my State" project while the world needs a Not in this World project, moving carbon around the world is no solution to a global crisis.

Turn it into a true auditable renewable source of generation and I expect there may be more support. Bury it along existing right of ways and I expect even more support but as the prior articles point out the project becomes non economic. Non economic implies that there are other sources of renewable that would cost less so it comes down to HQ tried and apparently failed to put a cheap high impact project through a economically distressed area in NH so they went to the the neighboring economically distressed region in the state to the East. The Lake Champlain project in VT has permits in hand for similar capacity and has designed a far lower impact project with far more long term benefits to the state of VT, why isnt HQ jumping on that bandwagon?. The reason is they make more money with captive lower cost line in NH and ME.

I do agree Maine and NH have been trashed by the need for power in southern NE. Those windmills you see are all selling to predominately southern New England users. The PNGTS gas line that runs across Northern NH through Maine supplies predominately southern new england utilities. In my opinion its about time that Maine pushes back on a foreign corporation paying a relative pittance to the host state where all the benefits are going to Mass and Connecticut. Note there have been similar ponded storage hydros proposed in Maine in the past on the Saint John River (Dickey Lincoln), that project was shut down due to environmental impact. Just because Quebec is willing to trash their environment and native cultures lands does not mean New England should accept it. Mass, CT, VT all deemed HQ power as "brown" long ago not allowing it to be counted as "green" and the only thing that has changed is the political winds have shifted even though the dams are still causing significant environmental impact to a strip of land roughly the height of Mass starting at the Mass/NY border and ending in Eastern Maine at the New Brunswick border. Vt deemed HQ power green with the specter of VT Yankee going down and now the two biggest utilities in the state are shells owned by Canadian utilities.
 
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Lost Dad I agree 100% with your observations on Industrial Wind Power impacts versus long distance power export from HQ. When PB started this thread and someone posted link to satellite imagery it was obvious proposed route is through industrial forest land. Visual impact due to industrial wind farms is far more impact than the small area impacted by the CPC. Maine has sacrificed itself to benefit Renewable Energy for MA and CT. IMO CPC through Maine is lesser of two evils. PB is also correct in HQ power is not really "renewable" or green and comes at high price cultural and otherwise. Inconvenient truth is renewable is unfortunately a myth promoted by liberals. Speaking as engineer who has thought about this I think it is myth. The real elephant in room is earth has reached unsustainable population levels and how many humans can inhabit it. Any solution doesn't involve population control will not result in solution to problem. Sorry if this thread is not related to reason for being of VFTT.
 
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If you want an analysis. here you go https://bangordailynews.com/2019/06...-the-battle-over-cmps-145-mile-electric-line/

Unfortunately it doesn't resolve the net greenhouse gas issue as well as it does the economics. Spilling water over a dam is anathema to a hydro operator but good for a river ecosystem although the presence of dams in general on a river effectively permanently disables it. It also does not even mention the significant methane gas release from the boreal forests due to the larger impoundments and varying water levels.

The "over investment" in the HQ system has been subject of pushback in Quebec province. HQ is very large economic entity in Quebec owned by the province yet so large that it has major political power. It makes or breaks politicians and how it gets bigger is build generation. HQ ratepayers expect rock bottom rates and HQ has supplied them by using exports to subsidize the local ratepayers. Power has been so cheap in the province that its the primary source of heat in many areas. The ratepayers are unwilling to fund expansion of generation so they have effectively told HQ that if HQ wants to expand they had to get someone else to pay for it. The ratepayers of New England are the path forward for HQ as New England has legislated the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative REGI which makes it attractive to export the environmental impact of large scale renewable projects outside the region now that the "easy local carbon reductions" have been made.

One of the technical problems with hooking a large part of New England's power needs to generation 1000 miles away is national reliability standards for power systems discourage remote generation as it potentially has high human and natural potential for interruption. The ice storm of 1998 shut down the HQ transmission system for months running into years and the method used to get back on line was very controversial where all permitting was suspended and HQ was allowed to run new lines where and when they wanted to regardless of environmental and property owner rights. There have also been province wide blackouts due to induced voltages in the transmission lines from sun spots. And of course a couple of morons with a firearm shooting at insulators knocked out the existing HQ line through NH for several days several years ago. Reliability standards require that local standby generation is available to back up these long lines and do to limits with the gas grid, that backup generation is generally oil fired simple cycle gas turbines spread all over New England. There is further long term concern that New England has lost the ability to generate its own power, as it gets more dependent on HQ, HQ gains an upper hand in future negotiations.

Ultimately this is a massive economic project with winners and losers that is clothed in "green". If New England wants to go green, its far better spending money locally. Spend the money on offshore wind, grid batteries and demand response down to the consumer level. An old regional electric utility tag line "when you flip a switch, its there" has a lot of environmental costs as that peak generation is expensive and dirty. Far better to limit peaks by pushing voluntary power demand to off peak periods using rate incentives/penalties and grid batteries located locally. Mass is going to be implementing "clean peak" incentives to encourage the combination of renewable and storage to deal with peak power demands without cranking up the peakers and oil fired generation.
 
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Jazzbo is correct IMO regarding population issue as being the real limiting variable and I’ve said that here before. The earth simply cannot handle the population growth, and all the conservation efforts barely scratch the surface in terms of their long term collective impact. I think we all hope that some ground breaking technology will make truly renewable energy abundant, cheap and without significant environmental impact, but I don’t see the physics in that currently.
 
NHClimber said:
I think we all hope that some ground breaking technology will make truly renewable energy abundant, cheap and without significant environmental impact, but I don’t see the physics in that currently.
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Remember there are at least a couple political factions in "green" leadership.

There is a large faction that genuinely would like to see a real energy solution, but they shoot themselves in the foot by ruling out nuclear. The reality today is that today, you cannot supply abundant reliable energy without using nuclear. The other technologies are still "pie in the sky." We have to work hard to develop those other technologies (wind, solar, tides, fusion, whatever) and in 50-100 years they may be ready. But political leaders trying to force in "progress" when the technology is not ready will continue to create one disaster after another.

There is also a faction that is simply anti-development of any kind, and are unalterably opposed to anything that works. If you developed the "magic power source" tomorrow, they would be opposed to it. Examples:

"The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are." -
Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… Climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world." - Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

You have to pay close attention to sort out the messaging that drives things like these difficult power line projects. I would actually love to see the "magic power source" be developed, because it would strip away a lot of cover and make it easier to see real motivations like "public good" and "environmental benefit", and also real motivations like "personal wealth" and "political power."
 
PB, thank you for the enlightenment-I was not aware that HQ would be supplementing power sold to the US with gas fired generation for use locally. In fact, as it is impossible to track where each electron is generated, we would be buying whatever mix HQ is generating at the time. For years I have been impressed by the ability of the local utilities to sell "Green Power" at an increased rate as there is no way to control that anyone is actually getting green power unless you generate yourself. I have always thought that storage, distributed generation, microgrids and demand pricing will all be important parts of a long term solution. However, without education, people will always have the expectation that the power is always on. BTW, I applaud the decision made by Pacific Gas & Electric to simply close down portions of the power grid when high fire conditions exist-PGE was blamed for some of last summers fires in CA and shutting down the power grid could reduce the future potential for fires (and reduce their potential liabilities). I believe that the PGE situation will go a long way in teaching the US consumers that "always on" is a luxury

Further drift thread warning......there is early research showing that properly treated milk proteins can be used for super capacitors (useful for storage of quick bursts of higher energy) Battery storage will be a large part of any wordwide energy solution; both grid scale storage and distributed storage will be important going forward. If we were able to use milk proteins as a base for future batteries, then we could be faced with the environmental costs of farming (methane, etc) which is domestic vs mining of lithium which is beyond the US borders. On & on & on.
 
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