DETROIT, Maine — Central Maine Power’s Maine Power Reliability Program is on schedule and on budget, said CMP spokesman John Carroll.
The $1.4 billion project that started in September 2010 stretches from Eliot on the New Hampshire border up to Orrington.
“What we are doing is doubling up the number of lines in our 345 [kilovolt] system,” said Carroll.
The 345kV lines are the highest tier of lines run, he said. The voltage drops from each tier until it brings 240 volts to someone’s home. Carroll likened it to a highway system.
“Major interstate lines are at 345kV. Primary routes like, Route 1 or 2, would be 115kV,” said Carroll. “Those carry power between major substations through major metropolitan areas. It steps down to 34.5kV. That would be similar to a state-owned road, not a numbered highway.”
The lines step down to 12,470 volts and then to 240 volts, he said. The hierarchy allows CMP to move larger amounts of power along longer distances.
In addition to lines and poles, 14 substations also are being constructed. Some of the help is coming from Bangor Hydro and Public Service New Hampshire.
The system was in need of an upgrade because the current setup was designed in the 1960s, he said.
“The equipment still works just fine. The system will become obsolete in some respect,” said Carroll.
Carroll said the geographic energy load has shifted to the south and coastal regions. Loads also have doubled since 1971, when the system was first energized.
The construction project directly affects more than 70 cities and towns in the state. Carroll said CMP is generally using existing corridors, but some places needed to be widened. In some cases, the company has had to buy additional land.
“It’s the largest construction project undertaken in Maine,” he said. “Geographically, it’s the largest transmission ever done in New England, at least in recent history. It’s very timely for Maine. It’s generating a lot of employment.”
Carroll said CMP estimated that between 2,500 and 2,700 people work on the project on a daily basis. The project is so big that CMP had an economic impact study done by the University of Southern Maine.
“For every three jobs directly involved in the project, roughly one additional job would be indirectly created,” said Carroll, mentioning those jobs range from those who supply materials to waitresses near construction sites. “Between 700 to 900 people have jobs because of the project. It’s very satisfying for us.”
He added that of the 350 contractors working on the project, about 270 of them are based in Maine.
Mainers won’t have to bear the brunt of the cost either, said Carroll. About 50 percent of the project is financed through equity from Iberdrola, the Spanish parent company of CMP. The rest is borrowed. CMP will make the money back through ratepayers. Maine ratepayers will be responsible for 8 percent of the project, while other New England customers will pick up the rest. On the flip side, Maine ratepayers are responsible for 8 percent of any ISO New England project, even if it doesn’t directly benefit Maine.
“It’s an exciting project for a company of our size. It’s exciting to know that we can make an investment like this and have the employment it’s created,” said Carroll. “We’d like to think we’ll be in position to provide reliable service for the next several decades.”
Carroll said the project should be completed in the second quarter of 2015.
Take a look at the picture of all the wooden swamp mats being used in order to make this project “zero impact”
“Zero impact” is an enviroterrorist term that means make this project as expensive as possible for the ratepayers of the state of Maine..
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to harvest, cut, saw, and bolt together a road so that there will be NO disturbance of the soils this line is being built on.
This is another example of the environmental wizards at work.
What a Joke !!
Actually, your criticism is wrongly placed. Yes, the “swamp mats” are needed to mitigate impacts on wetlands. It is obvious in the photo that these are wetlands that are ready to mire just about any piece of equipment this time of year. But wetlands mitigation has been on the books for 40 years.
Where your criticism should be placed, though, is the push for useless wind power. In Maine, we needed some modest upgrades and modernization of an aging local grid. But our existing grid was just fine for shipping our excess generating capacity out of state (actually into the ISO-NE grid).
So, we get the trifecta: increased costs for building an un-needed 345 kv line; the building of this line facilitates the proliferation of sprawling wind sites, resulting in mountain ridges being blasted away, leveled, and scalped; and by adding more unpredictable, unreliable, costly–but mandated by RPS zealots–wind power, our costs go up.
Simply put, anyone who likes this MPRP and wind power are condemning everyone in Maine to paying higher electricity rates.
You’ll get no argument from me about fickle wind, but the stupidity of the enviro organizations that push for these zero impact initiatives is beyond belief.
The highline that was run from Stacyville to Island Falls to service the biomass plant at Sherman Station was done less than forty years ago.
Not one swamp mat was used, the equipment was towed and floated through the mud and swamps and the only damage evident today are the rotting stumps that are left.
You will get no argument from me about the resiliency of wetlands to rebound quickly unless there is a huge amount of erosion or they are permanently drained or completely filled in. Seen it many times.
By contrast, when we blast away the mountains and level acres for wind turbine pad sites, that is a permanent disfigurement of the uplands. There is also resion with silt and arsenic from exposed bedrock flowing into our streams and lakes. An environmental travesty for something that doesn’t work (would you pay an enormous price for a home appliance that worked only 25% of the time?) and is forced upon us due to arbitrary mandates and greed for tax subsidies.
And supported by the SAME enviroterrorist organizations, I will add !!
go ole Angus King
We did not need to do this massive project, but CMP blatantly lied about the need and the intent until the PUC gave its approval. The only reason this massive expansion of 345 kv line is being done is to overbuild a transmission system to handle occasional surges of wind generated power from industrial wind sites built in Maine’s hinterlands. As far as upgrades to our Maine grid, that should have been done as part of a capital improvement multi-year plan built into CMP’s budget. But the local grid improvements are the small part of this MPRP.
It was sold under the guise of “reliability”, “modernization”, “future economic development”, yada, yada, yada. After PUC approval, CMP then started to speak of its true purpose, to deliver wind power from Maine to Boston. Part of turning Maine into a wind turbine plantation, destroying our uplands and our “Quality of Place” for a feckless power source.
This project should not be hyped or praised in any way. It is yet another expensive piece of the saddest chapter in our state’s environmental history—the destruction of our mountains, fragmentation of wildlife habitat, injuring people from low frequency sound waves from turbines and EMF from the 345 kv lines, and changing our grand vistas into views of endless ridges bristling with turbines as tall as 45 story Boston skyscrapers—for the folly of wind power. Shame on us for allowing this to happen!
Why do you people cry so much about energy prices but use more and more everyday? Get your head out of the sand, energy use increases every year and so does the need for new infrastructure. I say build a couple of nuke plants. BTW wind turbines on a ridge line are not a blight but instead a nice reminder of clean energy.
“wind turbines on a ridge line are not a blight but instead a nice reminder of clean energy.” What an asinine statement! I invite—though I wish I could demand—all those who believe we should destroy Maine’s natural resources and beauty for a farce like feckless wind to move. Pack up now and leave, for you don’t deserve to live in the most beautiful state in the eastern USA. Have we all forgotten the findings of the Brookings Institute that says Maine’s “Quality of Place” is it’s greatest asset? Maine must not be turned into a wind turbine plantation!
I guess you would like to put people like me in a gulag huh, commissar.
Now, I am no economist, but I ain’t a fool, either. The article says “Mainers won’t have to bare the brunt of the cost either, said Carroll.” Then two sentences later, the article says “CMP will make the money back through ratepayers”. Well, ratepayers are Mainers, so I guess we will be gouged for all the costs of this project which is unnecessary. It is being overbuilt for the possible day that all those industrial wind sites being dreamed about happen to get built and some day the wind blows just right and all 2700 MW of that imagined wind power hits the grid. What a farce!
The other farce is hiding behind that 8% figure. At least the writer came clean that Maine is on the hook for helping to pay for all those other ISO-NE projects. By having this “socialized” into ISO-NE, we can participate in our 8% share of up to $30 Billion in new projects, which works out to $2.4 billion. Thanks a lot Iberdrola/CMP and all those zealots pushing useless, expensive wind power through arbitrary mandates for “renewable” power. Just dig an ever deeper economic hole for Maine.
They are adding one more 345KV line to the “stupid grid”. Smart grids have 765kv lines and are more energy efficient with less power loss. We all pay for stupid. They pay now…we pay later.
They hire out of state firms to build these lines, brilliant, the people of Maine get screwed out of work again. If it’s going to be built in Maine and Maine people can do it, then Maine people are gonna do it darn it…. and CMP ain’t to much “Maine” any more. Maybe they should move their stupid grid to Mass.
Au contraire, they’re moving the “products” of their stupid grid to Mass.
“Carroll said the geographic energy load has shifted to the south……
Maine ratepayers are responsible for 8 percent of any ISO New England project, even if it doesn’t directly benefit Maine.”
Boston is insatiable.
Maine’s mountains cannot provide enough WIND for them.
WIND = 75% does NOT blow and 10-30% loss in transmission. 1000MW = 100MW
WIND is a failure.
Lift the ban on Hydro. Let Canada send Direct Current right down the pike.
Before I hear from Fitts and Hinck how WIND is Maine’s money they better tell us where this WIND and these REC’s are being sold. I should ask King Angus. He knows.
RGGI, RPS , REC, Cap and Trade, Efficiency Maine, NRCM go away, you cost us money.
Aside from all of the other inaccuracies in your statements.. I am most curious about the 10-30% loss in transmission statement. Wind, hydro, biomass, natural gas… they all use the same transmission infrastructure. Are you saying that those sources of generation suffer from the same transmission loss factor? I will go an check CMP’s website again, but I was SURE that their posted loss factor for transmission was 3.4% It’s public knowledge…
http://www.cmpco.com/SuppliersAndPartners/MainesElectricityMarket/LoadProfillingSettlement.html
why do they want a direct current line? and why wont WIND tell us the loss from turbine to sub stations and and why wont WIND tell us how much “parasitic” draw from GRID?
Wonder who is going to pay for the 1.4 Billion Dollar upgrade ?Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ! Mainers will be left with the most expensive electrical system in the world at this rate. More Businesses will certainly be leaving Maine that is for sure.
I think I could be a reporter for BDN. Certainly on the big wind and other energy issues, it often appears you just take the press release from the industry and copy it. Aren’t there issues and opposition to this project? Aren’t there questions being raised about Iberdrola controlling our electric company (reliance on foreign oil, Canadian hydro, FOREIGN BANKS)? BDN could cut their reporting costs by shopping out these press release articles to high school writing classes
BDN (obviously) can’t cut their reporting costs any more.
No benifit to Mainers, yet Mainers will pay….
Almost everywhere wind power is introduced into an area, new costly mammoth transmission is needed to handle its erratic sputtering output. An example is of course the Maine Power Reliability Project (MPRP) also known as the $1.5 billion CMP upgrade.
Without such new transmission, the wind industry is essentially dead in the water. So how convenient that the Maine ratepayer gets to pick up the tab for such transmission projects.
Now you might be told that because Maine is only 8% of the New England grid, Maine ratepayers fund “only” 8% of the aforementioned $1.5 billion cost. But what ratepayers are not told is that they will pay 8% of similar wind-required new mammoth transmission projects across the grid. There have been cost estimates for these of up to $30 billion. So multiply Maine’s 8% times $30 billion and then divide by the number of ratepaying households and businesses.
Read the rest here:
http://www.windtaskforce.org/page/transmission-lines
The new power line “upgrades” are for wind farms. Here is proof.
http://www.maine.gov/mpuc/electricity/docs/MPUCMotiontoInterveneER08-190.PDF