October 26, 2016
Maine

Maine wind loses, solar wins in regional clean energy bids

By Darren Fishell, BDN Staff | Bangor Daily News | Oct. 25, 2016 | bangordailynews.com

PORTLAND, Maine – Two major electricity transmission proposals lost out in bidding to deliver wind power to southern New England utilities, but a Yarmouth-based solar company will enter contract negotiations.

A panel from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island announced Tuesday that it picked Ranger Solar among its winning bidders, though it’s not clear whether the company’s two projects proposed in Maine will be part of negotiations.

The three states selected about 460 megawatts of generation as part of joint procurement to help each state meet renewable energy purchasing goals.

The company proposed a 50-megawatt solar array at the Sanford Airport and an 80-megawatt array on 250 acres in Farmington.

A representative from Ranger was not immediately available for comment on the announcement. The company recently secured a lease for a solar array in Limestone, at the Loring Commerce Centre, the former Air Force base.

Notably, that includes two massive transmission proposals to access wind farms in western Maine and in Aroostook County.

In total, Maine wind developers had bid in about 2,140 megawatts of capacity into the process, which is about 3.5 times the state’s wind power capacity at the end of 2015.

The bulk of that wind power was offered together with a western Maine transmission line proposed by Central Maine Power Co. and a northern Maine line proposed jointly by Emera Maine and CMP.

The northern projects that would have connected to that line include the massive 600-megawatt King Pine wind proposal initiated by the now-bankrupt SunEdison. It also included proposals from EDP Renewables to expand its previously announced Number Nine Wind Farm and to build a new 250-megawatt wind farm at Horse Mountain in southern Aroostook County, between Stacyville and Sherman.

The western line proposed connecting to another 461 megawatts from projects proposed by NextEra Energy Resources and 85 megawatts of capacity from SunEdison’s Somerset Wind proposal, which included 26 turbines spread across the townships of Johnson Mountain, Chase Stream and Misery Township.

James Torgerson, CEO of CMP’s parent company Avangrid, said in an earnings call Tuesday that the company still sees value in the projects and will likely put those proposals to Massachusetts again during a renewables procurement in 2017.

“We’re very optimistic about those two projects,” Torgerson said. “They’re good projects that should get developed, and we’ll be bidding those into the Massachusetts RFP, as I said, in combination with some hydro providers, it looks like. We’re working with them now.”

A number of other projects proposed for Maine also didn’t make the cut, according to an announcement posted to the clean energy RFP’s website Tuesday.

Developer EverPower proposed a 250-megawatt wind farm in the Washington County towns of Cherryfield and Deblois, and SunEdison proposed its 72-megawatt Hancock County project, Weaver Wind.

Patriot Renewables also had asked the three southern New England states to buy power from its 23-megawatt Canton Mountain wind farm.