Tilting at Windmills
Where and how we are going to get most of our power in a fossil-free future?
Vinalhaven’s wind farm rises through the clouds. Ralston calls this image Prophets, a nod to “the vision it took on the part of the community to make this extraordinary project happen.”
By Philip Conkling
Photo by Peter Ralston
Alarmed by increasing electricity bills, islanders on Vinalhaven and North Haven proposed a project in the mid-aughts to build, own, and operate three wind turbines, supplying electricity to the islands at rates lower than what residents had been paying. The proposal passed in 2008 with 382 voters in favor and 5 opposed. The latter were mostly the project’s immediate neighbors, who objected to locating the machines in their backyards. Noise complaints from neighbors drove six years of court appeals, which cost ratepayers $1.2 million before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court put them to rest. The turbines, visible from more than a dozen miles away on the mainland, have produced as much power each year as the two islands consume, and many find them graceful additions to the landscape.
Are the Fox Islands a microcosm of energy independence? Not quite. The islands’ turbines produce much more electricity in winter than ratepayers use and much less than needed in summer. The project is a net energy exporter during some months and an importer during others. The hidden asset is an underwater transmission line that connects these communities to the New England grid, ensuring electricity whenever needed.
Maine is now in the midst of a great debate about our energy grid. Should we allow a new 53-mile transmission corridor, paid for by Massachusetts ratepayers, to be cut through commercial forestlands in Maine’s remote unorganized townships, to bring Canadian hydropower to the Boston market? Or should we protect that forested acreage for its wildlife and scenic and natural values? Voters get an opportunity in a November referendum to cancel the deal that Central Maine Power’s parent company struck with Hydro-Québec to build this transmission line.
Maine and five other states are part of the New England electricity grid. All New England states have ambitious renewable-energy goals. Meeting them, we are told, will affect the fate of the planet. Most New England states are small and unable to site on land projects of a scale that would significantly reduce CO2 emissions. They look north and see that all of the rest of New England can fit within the borders of the Pine Tree State and that the Gulf of Maine is even bigger than Maine’s land area.