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Friday, October 24, 2008
Flurry of wind power hits New England towns
By Jim Kozubek, Special to Mass High Tech
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Pennsylvania-based, publicly traded Iberdrola Renewables Inc. in December will open the 12-turbine, 24-megawatt Lempster Wind Farm in Lempster, N.H., able to power 10,000 houses.
It will be Iberdrola’s first renewable project in New England and New Hampshire’s first utility-scale wind farm, but more are coming. Iberdrola is in permitting phases to build in Readsboro, Vt., and Monroe, Mass., driven in part by states’ “renewable portfolio standards” that require utilities to sell renewable energy, the company said.
Julie Clendenin, a spokesperson for the American Wind Energy Association, said a dozen commercial wind projects now under proposal in the six New England states are being driven by these state standards and federal production tax credits that have been stable since 2005, at a time when energy demands are increasing.
“New England has a robust energy market with a growing demand for environmentally friendly energy, and states are incenting development,” said Terry Bennett, director of TransCanada Renewables, a division of TransCanada Corp.
TransCanada has broken ground on New England’s largest wind farm, a 44-turbine, 132-megawatt, $320 million project in western Maine, but it may not be the largest for long. Texas-based Horizon Wind Energy LLC said it will file permits by the end of the year to build 100 turbines, the first stage in a plan to put 400 windmills in Maine’s Aroostook County.
A Maine state task force this year recommended streamlined regulations on wind development, and called for adding 2,000 megawatts of wind power by 2015 and 3,000 megawatts by 2020, a plan requiring 1,000 to 2,000 more turbines. New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch in 2006 set a similar goal for renewables to make up 25 percent of the state’s total energy use including transportation by 2025. All six New England states now have renewable energy goals.
In New Hampshire, it’s having an effect.
Granite Reliable Power LLC, a subsidiary of Connecticut-based Noble Environmental Power LLC., which is majority-owned by J.P. Morgan and is in the process of making an initial public offering worth up to $375 million, wants to build a $247 million, 33-turbine, 99-megawatt wind park in Coos County, N.H.
The Coos County wind park would create 210 jobs, the company said in its proposal, and is scheduled to start operating in 2010. However, it would require significant upgrades to county transmission lines and generators. Granite Reliable Power said that if it gets local support, it would propose a second, 146-megawatt wind farm in the county.
Noble Environmental, started in 2004, has not yet generated significant revenue and reported $72 million in net losses as of the end of 2007, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In Rhode Island, Gov. Donald Carcieri has set out a plan to generate 20 percent of his state’s energy use from renewables, and the state selected Deepwater Wind, a unit of Newton-based First Wind Holdings Inc., now seeking an initial public offering of $450 million, to build a $1 billion, 1.3 million megawatt wind farm.
First Wind Holdings last year began operations of the 28 turbine, 42 megawatt Mars Hill facility in Aroostook County, Maine, and in December will open a 38-turbine, 57-megawatt wind farm at Stetson Mountain in northeastern Maine. First Wind has plans for at least three other projects in Maine.
Despite the number of development plans, troubles in the financial markets could hurt some of the wind companies. “The wind industry will be slowed by what has happened in the financial markets. As the cost of capital increases and capital becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive and harder to finance a wind project. These constraints are likely to lead to a ‘flight to quality,’” Clendenin said.
Jim Kozubek is a freelance writer in Portsmouth, N.H.
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