At a Maine Wind forum May 20, 2010 at the Rockport Opera House, locations as varied as Ragged Mountain, Vinalhaven, Monhegan and waters 20 to 50 miles offshore were discussed. The key speaker University of Maine’s Habib Dagher, PhD, leader of the DeepCwind Consortium said that the conflicts over the siting and effects of land-based and nearshore windfarming on health, the pursuit of happiness and the natural environment are serious and insoluble sources of social conflict.
Instead, Dagher told his audience, deepwater floating windstations 20 to 50 miles offshore will be much more powerful and reliable, and won’t harass their own consumers & wildlife with flicker, noise and infrasound. The DeepCwind Consortium has received tens of million of dollars to lead the nation in deepwater offshore windpower R&D. Listen to podcasts of he and other speakers and audience participants below.
Other topics at the forum: a plan for a windfarm on the Camden Hills’ Ragged Mountain, Island Institute on midwifing community wind on Vinalhaven and on its efforts to raise enthusiasm for onland windmills on Monhegan, Swans Island and Frenchboro,Des Fitzgerald on his novel deepwater windturbine device and more. A lively Q&A session, too!
Click Here for Part One of the forum (1 hr) Introduction , Senator Chris Rector; Richard Podolsky environmental consultant; Susan Pude, Island Institute/Maine Community Wind
Click Here for Part 2 of the Forum: (45 minutes) Dr Dagher’s presentation on Monhegan and deepwater offshore windpower
Click Here For Part Three of the Forum ( 50 minutes) Des Fitzgerald, Ragged Mountain proposal; Question & Answer session. Scott Dickerson of MCHT -speaking on his own behalf (1 minute) was not pleased by the Ragged Mtn windfarm plan; why not, he asked send the investment and talent toward over-the-horizon offshore windpower.
Tagged as:
floating windmills,
Habib Dagher,
Monhegan,
offshore energy,
windfarms
Several takes on the conclusion of LD 1810, An Act to Implement the Recommendations of the Governor’s Ocean Energy Task Force
What all sources agree on is that the state is leapfrogging over state waters to much windier sites ten miles and more offshore for utility size windfarming. It is also noted that the state will not issue a solicitation for windfarms in state waters - other than limited R&D in the three R&D sites – including off Monhegan. Malleable as all laws ultimately may be, everything could change, but right now Dr Dagher and the University of Maine-driven DeepCwind Consortium are in the ascendancy and their plan calls for going over the horizon. Reached April 13th, Willard Harris, director of the submerged lands division of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, confirmed no state waters utility or community scale ocean wind farm applications are anticipated or even likely, beyond the R&Ds.
The bill in its final form is ’Public Law 615′. html or word or pdf file It is a mishmash of changes to a variety of state statutes. Listen to mp3 recordings of the 3/11/10 public hearing on LD 1810_and its three worksessions. Includes the March 6th ocean windfarm seminar at 2010 Maine Fishermens Forum.
Maine Lobstermen’s Association April 2010 newsletter has two oceanwindmill articles
Offshore Wind Wire writer Peter Brennan: ”Maine Legislation amended to focus on deepwater wind”
Penobscot Bay Blog on “Wind Liberation “
Tagged as:
floating windmills,
LD 1810,
Monhegan,
offshore energy,
windfarms
LD1810, the Maine Legislature’s bill LD 1811,to authorize offshore wind leasing seems to be coming apart interestingly. Instead of filling state waters with windmills – a plan that enraged Maine’s fisheries, a new plan has emerged. By Tuesday night we’ll know if it has been adopted.
It would be something like this:
1. State Waters: Rather than follow “old Europe” by clogging up our nearshore coastal waters with windfarms, Maine will preserve her inshore waters for existing users. No windmills in state waters except for those R&Ds off Monhegan. Tidal and wave based power extraction may still be allowed – on small scales? Tidal won’t work easily in deep water.
2. Federal waters. Leapfrogging windpower extraction straight to floating windmills ten miles out and more. Skipping the shallow waters entirely.
3. Given that offshore electricity has to get to an on-land power grid, the plan is to run that issue of powerlines coming ashore past all the affected communities – municipalities fishing, tourism, aesthetes, etc, then come back in 2012 with recommendations In the interim, coastal towns and water dependent interests sprout protective ordinances or regulations.
Dr. Habib Dagher, director of the University of Maine’s offshore wind program, told the legislators at the worksession last thursday that floating offshore wind extraction is the answer.
“Rather then build fixed base units in shallow waters, which take a lot of equipment to build (it’s like like building a boat in the middle of the ocean and affixing it to the bottom of the ocean, thats what the Europeans are doing), we want to build like Bath Ironworks does: build it in a drydock. Float the drydock and tow the whole thing out to deep water.”
“In terms of Maine’s timeline: our goal is build our first demonstration floating turbine, a third-scale turbine about 120 feet above the water – next year and place it in the water the year after in the Monhegan site.” Following that, and shaking the bugs out of it, in 2013 we would build the first 4 or 5 megawatt unit, and place that in the water. Following that in 2014 and 2015, build our first “stepping stone” farm – a 25 megawatt farm. The next phase: development of the large scale 500 to 1,000 megawatt farm. We have at least one developer interested to do that and have it operational in 2020.”
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s Patrice McCarron responded to Dr Dagher:
“We wholeheartedly support this offshore development. Obviously it passes by the majority of where my stakeholders make their living. So that’s a no-brainer. When I look at the language here, though; because the bill is so comprehensive, and because its laying out the regulatory process to establish this in state waters – which I fully understand can happen anyway, and probably is a blessing in disguise – it scares me.”
“What’s missing for me after taking in all this comment, is the legislative findings of the bill which begin on page 14 and page 15; the sections A-1, 2, 3 and 4. It doesn’t clearly state that this is the state’s goal: to pass over this existing technology in state waters, and really focus where the wind resources are greatest. Those are strictly legislative findings, but for me it really sets the tone for the values and the goals of the state, and I’d like to look at potentially strengthening that and clarifying what the true intention of this is.”
By tomorrow night, we’ll know if Dagher’s Point hits the target: no windfarms within ten miles of shore or inhabited islands, to protect existing nearshore users, except for Monhegan which, Christlike, would allow its ineffable beauty to be scourged and, yea, sacrificed, for the greater good of of the rest of marine Maine.
Then again, there’s a little lawsuit pending, which may keep Monhegan’s views and sonic landscapes free of the lash.
Tagged as:
Monhegan,
nearshore,
offshore,
windfarms
Thursday March 11th, the Legislature’s Utility and Energy Committee held its public hearing on LD 1810
.
Listen to the legislators and testimony to them by MDEP, DMR, Neptune Energy & other would-be wind industrialists, and opponents and supporters of the same. Lance Burton describes to legislators his life on Monhegan and in Castine and what that makes him think about the bill. LD 1810
Hats off to legislators Leila Percy and Hannah Pingree for insisting on mammoth changes to the bill (2 minute mp3) in response to outrage from theirscalloping shrimping and groundfishing constituents. Specifically, they told the committee to
(1) Turn
LD 1810 into a Resolve directing Marine Resources Committee and Natural Resources legislative committee to take it to their commercial fishing constituents recreational fishermen, scenic activists, birders, next session in 2011 to see if the people want this to happen and let the legislators decide from that, not just get a 38 page bill foisted upon them late in the session, and be told to just bite the bullet and approve it anyway.
OR
Boston-based Neptune Wind exec to Legislators: I want your state's waters
(2) Remove everything from LD 1810 that would promote or facilitate commercial windfarm leasing anywhere in Maine state waters. Then approve the remainder of the bill. this would continue to keep the wind industry happy by giving it tax breaks, if they locate in federal waters outside state waters. Because it costs a lot more to locate out there. tax break or not,l keeping them out of Maine state waters – which as the Maine Lobsterman’s Association noted at the hearing there will be many less entrepeneurs rushing to Maine and grabbing leases. (The heating oil industry wants to strip out other non-ocean related parts of the bill)
It is as if a mighty iceberg headed at the Maine inshore fisheries’ Titanic is being successfully turned, by those answering the alarm that now is ringing in desperate peals from Passamaquoddy Bay to f the Piscataqua. For, if diverted a few degrees with relentless pressure, it may harmlessly pass by our waters, an icy white horseman heading for some other apocalyptic encounter.
The word from outer Penobscot groundfishers, shrimpesr and scallopers is to either can the bill or
If you care to be involved – for, against, or neutral – email the Utility& Energy Committee clerk Krisen Gottlieb Kristen.Gottlieb@legislature.maine.gov and the Marine Resources Committee clerk Marianne Macmaster Marianne.MacMaster@legislature.maine.gov and let them know of your opinion or insight; they will get your message to their committees’ members.
- Listening as Leila Percy testifies at the hearing
Tagged as:
LD 1810,
Maine legislature,
Monhegan,
windfarms
“What does Ocean Energy and Wind Power mean for Maine’s Fishermen?” was title of a seminar at the Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport Maine on Saturday March 6, 2010. The discussion included a review of the UM R&D wind site off Monhegan by scientist Neal Pettigrew, a description of the new bill LD 1810 that would open up all of Maine’s territorial sea to windfarm leasing and much more. Here as mp3s is everything that each speaker said at the seminar, in the order they spoke. The Q&A session was brief and I may post it shortly. Read my opinions/observations below the list of speakers’s links if you choose.
Introduction Dierdre Gilbert Maine DMR 2min
Beth Nagusky, MDEP Office of Innovation 13 min
George Lapointe, Department of Marine Resources 5 minutes
Des Fitzgerald, Principle Power 10 Minutes
Peter Hughes, Fishermen’s Energy, New Jersey 12 minutes
Neal Pettigrew, University of Maine on Monhegan R&D site 11 minutes
Addison Ames, Vinalhaven Electric Coop 10 min
Rob Snyder, Island Institute 10 minutes
My biased observations: A roomful of fishermen listened silent but very attentive, as the speakers made their pitches for leasing off Maine’s state waters to the power industry. No questions till all the speakers were done. One unusual thingw as that NOBODY got any applause. Not the govt officials of MDEP or DMR. Not the University of Maine scientist, not the Vinalhaven electric coop official, nor the “Fisherman Wind” guy from New Jersey or the Island Instituter. Just stunned silence, as a succession of maps rolled across the screen showing plans for windfarms the size of Delaware stretching offshore and onshore.
The Q and A was cut short – notably the panel declined to answer repeated requests for an approximate number of windmills they were planning to install in Maine waters. to reach the megawatts the state as set as goals. The industry people talked very happily in describing the kilowatts and megawatts of energy they could pull from Maine state waters ocean winds, but grew vague when asked to come up with a number of poles that would be placed in those waters. But none of the government officials or wind industry people would offer up even a guess.
One suspects that the public hearing on LD 1810 on March 11th in front of the Energy and Utility Committee will be well attended!
These words, of course are my observations and opinions and may have little to do with reality as others perceive it…
Tagged as:
Island Institutute,
Maine,
Monhegan,
nearshore wind,
Samoset DMR