This article from the Associated Press popped up in a few NH and ME newspapers today and seems to indicate the Berlin Project may be a least 6 years off in the future.
CONCORD, NH (AP) — Northern New England is turning to the sun, wind and waste wood for clean, renewable power, but there’s a serious problem: the threat of gridlock on electricity
“highways.” A prime example is New Hampshire’s northern Coos County, where there are proposals to build renewable energy plants with roughly 460 megawatts of capacity — two-thirds
of the proposed renewable projects in the state — to run over a transmission line that can only handle 100 megawatts. The bottleneck is in Whitefield, the end of a transmission loop that runs through Berlin and Lost Nation. Projects are approved on a first come, first-served basis, and the first in line, Noble Environmental Power, stands ready to claim the entire 100 megawatts in 2009 for a wind park. That will leave the other proposals to wither and die if investors, electricity consumers or the government don’t spend $200 million to upgrade 100 miles of line. Even if the money were available now, the upgrade could take six years to complete, presenting investors with another hurdle — time. Last month, backers of a proposed 70-megawatt biomass plant in Groveton announced they had had enough, at least for now. Joshua Levine, project developer for Tamarack Energy, a partner in North Country Renewable Energy’s plant, said the project is on hold despite the $1 million already spent on it. The plant would burn wood chips, low-grade wood from logging operations and other clean wood readily available in the economically stressed region. But investors declined to put up more money to hold onto land options, and Levine said Tamarack is now looking south to Connecticut and Massachusetts, where transmission is less a problem. As third in line in Coos County, Levine’s group would need Noble to drop not just the 100-megawatt wind project, but a second, 146-megawatt wind project. State and regional regulators acknowledge the hurdles — especially in northern New Hampshire — but don’t have ready solutions. A bill before the New Hampshire Senate would have the state be ready to act if no regional solution is forthcoming. ISO New England, which manages power for the region, is considering changing rules so more of the costs of transmission upgrades could be shared regionally. But as things stand now, backers of projects generally must pay for upgrades needed to connect them to the system. “None of this is a real speedy process,” acknowledges Michael Harrington, senior regional policy adviser for the state Public Utilities Commission. Officials in Maine, which leads New England in installed wind power capacity, have studied withdrawing from ISO, partly to speed progress on renewable energy projects. Critics including the Conservation Law Foundation and New Hampshire’s consumer advocate say that in addition to renewables, ISO should be more aggressive in promoting conservation to reduce the need for additional power. One reason for surging interest in such projects is a two-pronged effort by states to create economic incentives for renewables. Some of the incentives are in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a compact of the six New England states and four others to reduce greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel power plants. Others are standards, which vary in each New England state, for how much power utilities must get from renewable sources. The utilities, through their customers, subsidize growth in renewables.
