One day we will look back on November 2009 and mark it as a turning point in the history of the Maine coast.
The turning point will come when officials at Fox Islands Wind “flip the switch” that turns (and re-turns) the power of the winds off the Gulf of Maine into a productive local resource. It’s important to remind ourselves of what we already know: harnessing the winds of the Gulf of Maine was one of the most important natural resources that built the economy and the wealth of this region during the 18th and 19th centuries—a resource Maine has essentially ignored for well over a hundred years since the eclipse of merchant sail.
The remarkable accomplishment of the Fox Islands Electric Cooperative, that serves the communities of Vinalhaven and North Haven, could not have happened without an astounding positive vote of 98 percent of island ratepayers—year-round residents and summer people—supporting a $15 million investment that they will repay over 20 years through reduced, but fixed, power costs during the next two decades. The economics, in other words, work—with more than a little help from the federal tax code and the sale of renewable energy credits.
This past summer Monhegan also voted with a 75 percent majority of ratepayers and taxpayers to proceed with plans to erect a small turbine on Lighthouse Hill. This proposed turbine will supply more power than can be used to meet all the island’s winter electric needs and about a third of its summer needs. But what to do with the excess electric power generated in the winter, which, if an ingenious way to use it cannot be designed, may have to be “dumped” (or dissipated) as heat into the air?
This is not just Monhegan’s challenge. Monhegan’s wind energy dilemma is essentially Maine’s challenge in a microcosm. One of the chief difficulties of harnessing the Gulf of Maine’s enormous wind resource is that the peak energy from winter winds is not easily stored. The estimate of the Gulf of Maine’s wind energy potential is 5 gigawatts of power—more than a fleet of nuclear power plants—which is why Angus King calls the Gulf of Maine the “Saudi Arabia of wind.”
At the same time that we have this embarrassment of riches from winter wind, Monhegan, like the rest of Maine, is extremely vulnerable to the costs associated with heating our homes in the winter from fossil fuel sources. Maine is more dependent on home heating oil as an energy source to heat our homes in winter than any other state in the country. When (not if) the price of heating oil steps back on the up escalator, the piper will have to be paid. Our local and state governments, not to mention the vast number of Maine residents, will not be able to afford $5 per gallon of heating oil to heat our homes in winter. Period, end of report.
In the middle of last winter, Maine got a reprieve from the inexorably rising gas, diesel and home heating oil costs courtesy of a near collapse in the world economy. Now some people believe that new natural gas supplies from shale deposits will bail us out. However, this is not likely to have an effect throughout much of Maine, where no pipelines exist, whatever else you may believe about the availability and cost of shale gas.
How many months or years from now are we going to be facing the same crippling heating oil prices of the winter of 2007-08? You pick the date. The point is to use whatever time we have to prepare for the difficult future we face.
So Monhegan islanders are studying what technologies might be used to transform the excess energy from island’s winter winds into winter heat or some other useable form to benefit the community. George Baker, CEO of Fox Islands Wind LLC and the Island Institute’s VP of Community Wind, has offered some practical approaches for Monhegan to consider—and these strategies point toward the ways of productively using Maine’ vast wind energy supplies from the Gulf of Maine to address Maine’s most critical future energy needs.
This winter, Monhegan Plantation Power District (MPPD) is studying George Baker’s concept of a “dumb smart grid,” to turn on inexpensive retail electric heaters that plug into outlets when the wind is blowing and turn them off when the wind is not. MPPD is also looking at a community-scale greenhouse in combination with solar power to store some of the winter energy in vegetables and other foods for local use throughout the summer. And finally, the federal Department of Energy, with Senator Snowe’s help, is also looking at a proposal to support the project because of the innovative hybrid technologies being considered for this community-led project.
No sane individual or community wants to be a guinea pig for experimentation. But we all must harness our collective resources to address the most fundamental question facing all Maine communities, not just island communities. That question is not how are we going to turn on our lights at night, but how are we going to afford to heat our homes in the winters ahead and run our vehicles when we can no longer afford fossil fuels?
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.