VT Governor Pete Shumlin gets schooled on wind power variability

[wtmusic]

Shumlin calls on grid operator to stop cutting Lowell wind power

"Gov. Peter Shumlin is urging the New England power grid operator to stop limiting production from Green Mountain Power’s Lowell Mountain wind project during peak demand times for electricity.

New England and Vermont power grid officials say that GMP’s 21-turbine wind project was ordered to reel in generation during a recent heat wave because the project is incomplete and is connected to a weak point in the grid.

'It’s really pretty simple: We can’t set the system up so that an overload would occur,' Rourke said. 'There’s a limit to the amount of power we can transfer out of that area. … We always work to make sure the system runs in a reliable way. Having an event that could lead to a loss of customers is not a reliable outcome. So, we have to limit the amount of energy that the generators up in that part of the state are injecting into the network.'"

http://vtdigger.org/2013/07/28/lowell-power-curtailed-despite-high-power-demand-during-recent-new-england-heat-wave/

Lowell Mountains wind project: The great divider

"On Wednesday, Robbin Clark and Justin Lindholm walked around the outskirts of the blasted out platform supporting turbine 5. They looked incredulously at the bare rock that was once forest.

Clark lives less than two miles from the project.

'It’s a huge disaster for Vermont,” she said. “The energy is not in demand. We are selling the renewable energy credits to other states that pollute. It’s just not solving the carbon emissions issue. There’s nothing about this project that makes sense.'"

http://vtdigger.org/2013/07/04/lowell-mountains-wind-project-the-great-divider/

[kristopher]

1. wt1 Debunking the Renewables “Disinformation Campaign”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112750654

[NNadir]

2. A link to that swell guy Amory Lovins, who reported in 1976 that the US would be producing 25...

...quads of energy in the US by the year 2000, that nuclear power was dead in 1980 and oh yes, my favorite, that hydrogen hypercars would be in showrooms by 2005.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1016_TVhypercar.html

No matter how fast the rate of the decomposition of the atmosphere accelerates we'll hear the same line of faith based bull, up until the last minute.

Lovins won't give a shit. He's been living in that hellhole of a McMansion in Snowmass while three billion people on this planet lack even a latrine. He's a fucking useless consumer, like the rest of his ilk.

[Finishline42]

3. What's the problem?

New England and Vermont power grid officials say that GMP’s 21-turbine wind project was ordered to reel in generation during a recent heat wave because the project is incomplete and is connected to a weak point in the grid.

Because the project is incomplete

and is connected to a weak point in the grid.

So finish the project and improve the grid then get back to me.

[wtmusic]

4. Glad you asked.

The problem is that these piece-of-shit, useless installations are shaving the tops off pristine Vermont mountain wilderness for one reason alone: to sell Canadian gas to Vermonters through a cozy, corrupt connection between Pete Shumlin and Green Mountain Power CEO Mary Powell, who helped him get re-elected:

"When Governor Shumlin presented his State of the State speech on January 5, protestors against wind development stood outside the Capital dome. They weren’t just protesting a wind farm, though. They were protesting Shumlin’s overly-close relationship with Green Mountain Power (GMP), the utility that is building the wind development at Lowell Mountain. One sign showed Shumlin in bed with big wind. Another sign claimed that the Shumlin administration is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Power (GMP), the company building the wind farm at Lowell.

Why were the protestors carrying these signs? They noticed that there appears to be an overly close relationship between GMP and the Shumlin administration. However, the potential dangers of such a close relationship go far beyond the Lowell Mountain concerns. As reported in a previous article at True North reports, Who Owns the Infrastructure, GMP is poised to take over the majority of Vermont’s energy infrastructure. They will control most of the electricity merger through an upcoming merger with Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) and subsequent control of Vermont’s transmission infrastructure. Meanwhile, the parent company of GMP is Gaz Metro of Quebec. Gaz Metro owns Vermont Gas Systems, and plans to expand the pipeline deeper into Vermont. A single Canadian company, Gaz Metro, is poised to own most of the gas and electrical infrastructure in Vermont."

http://truenorthreports.com/the-gaz-metro-merger-shumlin-and-gmp#sthash.aDCbkaZ1.dpuf

The Not-So-Green Mountains

"BULLDOZERS arrived a couple of weeks ago at the base of the nearby Lowell Mountains and began clawing their way through the forest to the ridgeline, where Green Mountain Power plans to erect 21 wind turbines, each rising to 459 feet from the ground to the tip of the blades.

This desecration, in the name of “green” energy, is taking place in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom on one of the largest tracts of private wild land in the state. Here and in other places — in Maine and off Cape Cod, for instance — the allure of wind power threatens to destroy environmentally sensitive landscapes.

<>

The electricity generated by this project will not appreciably reduce Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions. Only 4 percent of those emissions now result from electricity generation. (Nearly half come from cars and trucks, and another third from the burning of heating oil.)"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/opinion/the-not-so-green-mountains.html#h[]

[kristopher]

6. So now you're pushing RightWing slander of a Democratic Governor?

Using rightwing talking points from Koch Bros funded groups and ALEC?

The problem is that these piece-of-shit, useless installations are shaving the tops off pristine Vermont mountain wilderness for one reason alone: to sell Canadian gas to Vermonters through a cozy, corrupt connection between Pete Shumlin and Green Mountain Power CEO Mary Powell, who helped him get re-elected:

"When Governor Shumlin presented his State of the State speech on January 5, protestors against wind development stood outside the Capital dome. They weren’t just protesting a wind farm, though. They were protesting Shumlin’s overly-close relationship with Green Mountain Power (GMP), the utility that is building the wind development at Lowell Mountain. One sign showed Shumlin in bed with big wind. Another sign claimed that the Shumlin administration is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Power (GMP), the company building the wind farm at Lowell.

Why were the protestors carrying these signs? They noticed that there appears to be an overly close relationship between GMP and the Shumlin administration. However, the potential dangers of such a close relationship go far beyond the Lowell Mountain concerns. As reported in a previous article at True North reports, Who Owns the Infrastructure, GMP is poised to take over the majority of Vermont’s energy infrastructure. They will control most of the electricity merger through an upcoming merger with Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) and subsequent control of Vermont’s transmission infrastructure. Meanwhile, the parent company of GMP is Gaz Metro of Quebec. Gaz Metro owns Vermont Gas Systems, and plans to expand the pipeline deeper into Vermont. A single Canadian company, Gaz Metro, is poised to own most of the gas and electrical infrastructure in Vermont."

[kristopher]

7. There is a history to this

The regional system operator was calling on all standby generation - every coal plant, every natural gas plant and even every oil plant was put into service, yet they curtailed the wind project. There were repeated requests made by various groups to explain the decision, but the system operator steadily refused to provide an explanation. Finally they said that even though the regional demand was extremely high, the wind farm was designed to service only local demand and therefore they curtailed the output.

Critics of the decision noted that local demand was extremely high and several unused oil generators owned by the wind farm operator were put into service.

The backstory is that when the wind farm was going through the approval process the system operator identified a need for a $10M grid upgrade in the area. Apparently the evidence that this upgrade was needed solely on the basis of a 63MW wind farm was pretty thin and the regulator allowed the wind farm to be built without making them pay for the $10M upgrade that the people earning money off the transmission system wanted.

If they were putting all of that generation online, the power that the wind farm wasn't allowed to sell was probably worth a small fortune. This stinks of an anti-renewable inspired effort to extort the wind farm into making an upgrade to the ISO's system.

[joshcryer]

5. Sounds like the Gov. didn't read the fine print.

The wind people seem perfectly fine with this.

[jpak]

8. This has nothing to do with wind power variability - it's a transmission bottleneck

that can, and apparently is, being fixed.

yup