In the event that it might have escaped your notice, the Public Utility Commission recently approved an emergency rate increase for the Monhegan Power Company to 70 cents per kilowatt-hour-up from 55 cents per kilowatt-hour. Since islanders use an estimated average of 15-17 kilowatt hours per day, this translates to an electric bill of between $350 and $400 per month. In contrast, electric power costs on the mainland for an average household is on the order of $80-$100 per month, less than one-fourth as much. If you are interested in island sustainability, as we are, these numbers focus the mind.
Let’s consider several other convenient, or inconvenient facts, depending on your point of view. First, the most extensive commercially viable wind resource in Maine is found not, as many assume, on the tops of Maine’s mountains and ridges-there just aren’t that many of them-but off Maine’s coast: tens of thousands of square miles of offshore waters where the wind blows fiercely much of the time. Second, the further offshore you go, for instance around Monhegan and Matinicus Islands, the higher the average wind speed. Third, the amount of electric power generated by wind turbines varies with the cube of wind speed. Thus small increases in wind speed translate into very large increases in the amount of electric power that can be generated.
Of course these facts are well known to the wind power industry, but have attracted relatively little commercial interest because it has been widely assumed that wind farms could not be developed anywhere off the New England coast where deep-pocketed summer people might be troubled by the sight of them. You could call this the Teddy Kennedy effect, after he and his neighbors have thus far successfully fought a six-year battle to prevent the siting of a 175-megawatt wind farm in sacred sailing waters off Cape Cod. However, if the Fox Island Wind project in mid-coast Maine’s backyard gets built on Vinalhaven, the offshore commercial wind calculus is likely be revisited.
If you ask yourself why approximately 99 percent of ratepayers on North Haven and Vinalhaven-both summer and winter residents-voted in July to proceed with a wind power project that would be seen from virtually every lovely waterfront home on both islands, there are perhaps as many reasons as there were voters. But several reasons stand out: all the economic benefits of the project are local-as are most of the costs.
Except in Maine’s unorganized townships where there are virtually no people, many reasonable Maine people vociferously demand to know why they should pay the costs of wind power development in terms of scenic, noise and environmental costs, when the benefits are widely distributed throughout the New England grid. In other words, in cranky New England where back yards are precious, if environmental costs are localized while economic benefits are generalized, developers can expect a lot of local opposition.
A second powerful source of support on the Fox Islands is the inherent appeal of energy independence. The island wind power project will produce as much electric energy as the islands annually use and thus insulate them from future price fluctuations.
The islands’ sustainability challenge is compounded by the additional high costs of winter heating costs. But what if a wind project on Monhegan, for instance, could generate enough additional relatively inexpensive power in the winter to run electric space heaters in place of propane heaters? We do not want to suggest that such a strategy could kill two birds with one stone, given the sensitivity of turbine effects on birds, but you get the idea. If simple but sophisticated controls are installed in Monhegan homes that can turn on cheap power when the wind is blowing, the proposition becomes very attractive economically.
The islands energy costs are thus a microcosm of Maine. All of Maine suffers under expensive electric power bills because so much of our power comes from natural gas generation-good for our air quality, but increasingly devastating to family budgets. Maine also has the highest percentage of heating oil usage in the country-over 80 percent of all households in Maine are heated by increasingly expensive oil.
A year ago, Maine’s governor convened a Wind Power Task Force that recommended a goal, now enshrined by the Legislature in state policy, to develop 2,000 megawatts of wind power in Maine by 2015 and 3,000 megawatts by 2020. Given the aforementioned Teddy Kennedy effect, offshore wind did not seriously enter the discussion. But if Maine truly wants to develop its wind resources, state leaders cannot ignore offshore wind.
In order that we not be caught flat-footed, state leaders should begin to develop a plan for attracting commercial partners to help develop offshore wind projects that will make Maine the country’s first energy-independent state and reduce our high electric costs and avoid the increasingly exorbitant home heating oil costs at the same time.