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• Anonymous

  Hopefully, Mr. King’s keynote address will clarify for those in attendance the distinction between “nameplate capacity” (the maximum a generator could produce if run at 100% of its maximum capacity 24/7) and “capacity factor” (the actual percentage of power produced compared its nameplate capacity).

  Industrial wind developers use nameplate capacity values when they tout that their “windfarm can produce enough electricity to power 50,000 homes”, or whatever. Sure it “can”, if the wind blows all the time and the generator runs flat-out day in and day out.

  The number that matters is the capacity factor. Since the start of its full-time operation on July 1, 2009 UMPI’s windmill has operated at just short of a 13% capacity factor.

• Patten_Pete

  As mainstream environmental groups greenwashed myriad green misdeeds, (they accepted $500,000 in “mitigation monies” – known as “protection money” in New Jersey), Baldacci’s Attorney General, Janet Mills whitewashed green crime. A perfect example is the wind industry’s carefully planned pickpocketing of the hard working Mainer and total disregard for Mainers’ pursuit of happiness.

  NY State’s Attorney General made wind company First Wind sign a Code of Conduct after he began investigating them for bribery and intimidation. That investigation continues.

  Also in NYS, US Congressman Eric Massa (D) requested of President Obama that First Wind’s stimulus gift (a total of $115 MILLION by the way), be revoked and he called for a GAO investigation of them – a company with a business model of “LIE, CHEAT AND CORRUPT”, according to the Democratic congessman’s exact words.

  You can read Massa’s letter to Obama by googling “Why Does Attorney General Janet Mills Refuse to Investigate the Wind Companies?”

  Can you think of any officials in Maine who have been corrupted?

  The other investigation of interest is the one that was reported in the Boston Herald about 15 months ago. It can no longer be read free of charge at the Herald, but it is available free of charge at Istock Analyst. Simply google: “Ex-partner of Boston wind exec charged”.

  This one is about one of First Wind’s top directors’ longtime business partner, Oreste Vigorito being arrested in Italy on fraud by obtaining millions in public subsidies to build wind farms that either never worked properly or did not supply the promised amounts of energy. The pair worked together for seven years in Italy and even lived next door to each other for a time. If you study them, you will see that First Wind started in Italy.

  Former Attorney General Mills refused to make them sign a code of conduct. Her sister, our former public health director, Dora Mills, steadfastly denied any health problems caused by the massive 400′ tall turbines’ noise and deep vibrations. Governor Baldacci’s chief counsel of three years, Kurt Adams, runs development for this company. Thanks to Baldacci, he now has a board seat with the Univesrity of Maine system where the university marches lemming like into the coming economic catastrophe called “Ocean Wind Power”. Governor Angus King’s son runs First Wind’s mergers and acquisitions.

  Are you getting the picture? These people work for us and that Stimulus GIFT to them is our money. Those subsidies are our money. We hire our public officials and we can fire them. It is time for everyone to start getting involved and take our state back and our country back.

  There will no doubt be pleas that Governor LePage not investigate the utter muck left behind by John Elias Baldacci and his band of merry men and merry women who roobbed from the rich and robbed from the poor to give to themselves. I hope and pray that Governor LePage resists such pleas and calls for a top to bottom investigation of the Augusta power establishment along with its defacto DEP, NRCM.

  We simply cannot afford otherwise.

  This is not about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It is about the dishonest versus the honest. Win one for the little guy Governor!

• Anonymous

  The wind industry NEVER supplies actual electricity production, hiding behind “proprietary information”. They use our tax dollars, and they secondarily tax us through RGGI cap & trade, but they refuse to be held accountable. Well thankfully, the University of Maine has invested $2 million (and counting) in an empirical experiment of wind power’s electricity production. The industrial scale wind turbine at UMPI has been operating for 628 days (since May 2009) and has produced only 1,057,220 KW Hours to date, equating to a miserable 11.7% capacity factor. The wind companies are furious that the University of Maine is publicizing these figures and are trying to claim that their turbines produce better, but the reality is they produce only about 5% better and there is nothing that people like Angus King can do to change this.

  They are buying themselves big fancy high carbon footprint homes (see Angus King and Brownie Carson’s homes for examples), big expensive cars and big expensive boats and flying all over the worls on big expensive vacations using OUR TAX MONEY and they think they have the right to conceal from the people their pathetic electricity production.

  Before Angus lectures college students on carbon, how about he explain how many square feet he heats in his residences. Or take a look at the RV he toured the U.S. with for thousands and thousands of gas guzzling miles. Just Google:

  “welcome to where’s molly”

• G. Alan Woods

  It reminds me of back in the 1950′s when everyone was rushing to learn how to design and build bomb shelters for homes.

• Anonymous

  NEWSFLASH from the country on earth most identified with windmills:

  Holland slashes carbon targets, shuns wind for nuclear

  By Andrew Orlowski

  Posted in Environment, 10th February 2011 13:31 GMT

  In a radical change of policy, the Netherlands is reducing its targets for renewable energy and slashing the subsidies for wind and solar power. It’s also given the green light for the country’s first new nuclear power plants for almost 40 years.

  Why the change? Wind and solar subsidies are too expensive, the Financial Times Deutschland , reports.

  Holland thus becomes the first country to abandon the EU-wide target of producing 20 per cent of its domestic power from renewables. This is a remarkable turnaround from a state that took the Kyoto Agreement seriously and chivvied other EU members into adopting renewable energy strategies. The FT reports that instead of the €4bn annual subsidy, it will be slashed to €1.5bn.

  If you want to read the article, just google:
  Holland slashes carbon targets

  NMCC students – we have a $14 trillion national debt and the subsidies will disappear here in the U.S. Not if, when. And when will be soon which is why Angus King is using you as props so he can make his millions of dollars by shoving two wind farms in sacred places of Maine against the wishes of Mainers. Do you think the wind snake oil sales people care if they steer you into a dead end?

• Anonymous

  I hope Angus King freezes his ass off up there in Aroostook County on March 9 while he spreads his lies about how Maine is going to become “unihabitable” due to climate change if we don’t give him TAX SUBSIDIES to build useless wind turbines all over our beautiful state.

  This is galling to see this kind of manipulation and brainwashing of young people to spread the falsehoods of “renewable” and “clean” energy. What these kids need is a good physics lesson about energy density and a good economics lesson about cost competetiveness of energy and its impact on the economy. Oh yeah, throw in that bit about heavily subsidizing wind power to add to the $14 Trillion national debt these starry eyed dreamers get to inherit and pay down. This is truly pathetic.

• Anonymous

  Google “Citizens’ Task Force on Wind Power” and read some of the blogs such as:

  Our Education System’s Role in Wind Power Proliferation

  We have been scammed by Baldacci.