Maine wind farm planned Canadian firm to study sites

A Canadian power company, hoping to bring to fruition what a now-defunct California firm could not a decade ago, announced plans Tuesday for a 3,700-acre wind farm atop the mountains of western Maine.

TransCanada, a firm based in Calgary, Alberta, that specializes in natural gas transmissions, hopes to buy the wind power rights to land in three townships near the Quebec border in northern Franklin County. If the company determines the site to be feasible for development and can get state approval for the project, a total of 200 wind turbines, each over 300 feet tall, could end up being erected on Kibby Mountain, Caribou Mountain and Kibby Range, according to TransCanada Project Engineer Thomas Patterson.

“We’re in early development at this time,” Patterson said during an interview in Augusta. He said the publicly held company filed an application Tuesday with the state Land Use Regulation Commission to set up meteorological stations at the proposed development sites. The stations will help the company determine how windy the sites are, Patterson said.

In 1994 a California company called Kenetech proposed erecting more than 600 turbines in the same townships. The company applied for and eventually received all the necessary development permits from the state but went bankrupt before it could start construction.

TransCanada officials said Tuesday the financial footing of their 55-year-old firm is much more stable than that of the failed California venture. As of last year, TransCanada had assets valued at $22 billion, according to company spokesman Kurt Kadatz.

The company owns power plants in Corinth, N.Y., and Burrillville, R.I., and has more than a dozen hydroelectric facilities on the Hudson, Connecticut and Deerfield rivers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, according to the company’s Web site. It also is in the permitting process for building six 100-megawatt wind farms on the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec.

“They have the capital resources to do it right,” said Elizabeth Swain, a Maine-based spokeswoman for the firm.

According to Patterson, advances in technology would enable the company to use fewer turbines at the Franklin County site to generate 200 megawatts of power, which is approximately the same amount of power the Kenetech project would have generated.

The company, at a cost of $175 million, initially would erect 67 turbines, each with a 1.5-megawatt generating capacity, along the mountain ridges to create a 100-megawatt facility, Patterson said. Eventually, if the project proves to be worth expanding, there would be twice as many turbines generating a total of 200 megawatts of power. That would be enough electricity to supply power to about 70,000 households.

The turbines TransCanada has in mind each would have three “slow-turning” blades, each of which would be 35 meters long, mounted on a 65-meter tall tower, according to Patterson. The highest point of a rotating blade would be 100 meters, or about 328 feet, above the ground. The elevation range in the mountains in which the turbines would be erected is between 2,800 feet and 3,200 feet.

Transmission lines would have to be installed over a 28-mile distance to connect the wind farm to existing Central Maine Power Co. lines, Patterson said. The wind-generated power would tie into the New England power grid via the electric station at Wyman Dam on the Kennebec River in Moscow.

TransCanada is buying the wind-power rights along the ridges from General Electric, which is believed to have acquired those rights in 2002. According to Swain, Plum Creek owns the land where the turbines would be erected but is not involved in the sale of the wind-power rights.

Patterson said it likely would take a year for TransCanada to complete detailed environmental and feasibility studies for the proposal and then another year to complete the permitting process. If everything goes as the company hopes, construction would get under way in August 2007.

“It will be a very public process,” Swain said.

Power generated by wind farms is “cost-competitive” with other forms of power generation and has the added appeal of being a much cleaner source of energy, according to Patterson.

“We view wind energy as an economically attractive alternative in the market,” he said.

TransCanada’s proposal is not the only wind farm project pending in Maine. Evergreen Wind Power LLC hopes to erect 30 wind turbines on Mars Hill Mountain in central Aroostook County by early next year.

Attempts late Tuesday afternoon to contact officials with Conservation Law Foundation, Maine Audubon Society and Natural Resources Council of Maine about TransCanada’s proposal were unsuccessful.

Eleven years ago these environmental-advocacy organizations and the Appalachian Mountain Club supported the Kenetech proposal in exchange for the company’s commitment to conduct extensive studies of how birds would be affected by its wind farm. Also, Kenetech promised the groups it would contribute $50,000 toward a study of other possible wind farm sites in Maine and would set aside a “certain amount” of land.

Beth Nagusky, Maine’s director of energy independence and security, said Tuesday that the state does not endorse specific power-generation proposals in Maine but does support in general the development of renewable-energy resources such as wind power. Suitably located facilities such as wind farms will help reduce global warming, decrease Maine’s dependence on fossil fuels, and shield consumers from the volatility of oil prices, she said.