Wendy and Perrin Todd knew what would happen to their view of Mars Hill Mountain when crews starting erecting wind towers near their backyard. They braced themselves when their home, newly built on the north side of the mountain, shook because of the blasting. But what shocked them — and what they said this week they should not be expected to live with — is the noise. “They turned on tower Number 9, and almost immediately it made enough noise that it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that can’t be right,’” Wendy Todd said. “It all depends on the wind speed and direction, but the best way to describe it is you step outside and look up thinking there’s an airplane. It’s like a high-range jet, high-low roar, but with the windmills, there’s a sort of on and off ‘phfoop … phfoop … phfoop’ noise.”

It seems few in this town of about 1,500 people can agree on UPC Wind Management’s newly completed $85 million project, which makes the unassuming potato-growing and truck-brokerage community home to New England’s largest wind farm. But there’s one thing everybody can agree on: The place sure looks different. Long before a visitor arrives at Mars Hill, the towers become visible along what used to be just another mountain. The total height from the ground to the tip of the blade is 389 feet. Each tower has three blades, which spin in winds whipping west to east toward Canada just a few miles away.

New England Energy Alliance Survey Finds Consumer Concern about Future Electricity Supplies, Desire to Choose Electricity Supplier and Support for Addressing Global Warming

Politicians, scientists and policymakers seek to put Maine at the forefront of an energy revolution powered by world-class wind power blowing against the state's entire coast. The Ocean Energy Task Force, convened by Gov. John Baldacci, held its first meeting last week to begin the work of determining how the Atlantic Ocean might power homes, businesses and transportation in Maine and beyond.

Two utilities on Tuesday proposed $1.9 billion worth of electric infrastructure improvements to ensure reliability of the existing power grid as well as to connect northern Maine to the New England power grid for the first time. ...A study has indicated that the existing power grid serving CMP customers will no longer operate reliably beyond 2012 without the improvements, Burns said. Meanwhile, residents of northern Maine have not enjoyed the potential fruits of electric deregulation because Maine Public Service Co. is not connected to the rest of the New England power grid.

The [land use regulation] commission will decide whether to accept a staff recommendation to reject Maine Mountain Power's proposal to put 30 wind turbines on Black Nubble Mountain and Redington Pond Range in Franklin County. At the same meeting, the commission will also decide whether to accept a staff recommendation to reopen the record to consider a much smaller version of he same project with 18 turbines on Black Nubble only.

FREEDOM -- Town officials are considering a 430-mile round trip bus ride to Hull, Mass., to get a better idea of what their town would look like with three wind turbines spinning on Beaver Ridge.

FREEDOM - A Portland-based energy broker wants to install three wind turbines on a ridge in this western Waldo County town that would provide enough electricity to power 2,000 houses.

As consumers, we pay the full market price for wind-generated electricity plus the value of renewable energy credits mandated by the Legislature. As federal taxpayers, we donate another two cents per kWh, and support the fast depreciation (tax savings) allowed wind installation entrepreneurs. Mars Hill’s units produce 1 percent of Maine’s electricity and 0.01 percent of New England’s. The Kibby Mountain proposal of 44 three-MW units is projected to produce about .37 billion kWh per year. The number of kilowatt-hours supplied by the wind is very small. The combined output from Mars Hill and Kibby Mountain would be about 5 percent of Maine’s or .5 percent of the total New England grid. The real cost of wind energy, if broken out on our electric bill, would be a shock.

High atop some of the tallest mountains in Maine, a wind farm proposal has set the stage for a clash of environmental values that could define the future of wind power in Maine.

PUGWASH - Opponents of a proposed wind farm on the Gulf Shore got more fuel for the fire Friday night. Mark Harris, a pastor from Bridgewater, Maine, spoke Friday night at the Ground Search and Rescue in Pugwash about how a wind farm in Mars Hill, Maine has terrorized locals. He bought property in Mars Hill roughly 1200 feet away from the turbines, but hasn't done anything with it because of how unbearable the sound and strobing from them is. "Many of the mills we have, on certain days when the wind comes from a certain direction and the humidity is such and such, it will be all but silent at 1200 feet away where my home site would be. But come back the next day and it'll pound until you can't tolerate being there and there's no predicting when that will happen," he said. He said the wind farm has wreaked havoc on the town, with many people now dealing with health complications allegedly caused by the turbines' sounds and shadows.

It remains to be seen what effect that wind power will have on jobs in Maine. Environmentalists in several regions of Maine are clashing over various proposed wind projects in Freedom, Carrabassett Valley and other locations.

MARS HILL, Maine — This year, when Steven and Tammie Fletcher took their traditional New Year’s Eve walk to the top of Mars Hill, the crisp winter stillness mixed with something unfamiliar: the whoosh of the new windmills towering over the northern Maine mountaintop. This is not how it was supposed to be, say the Fletchers and their neighbors on the north side of Mars Hill, where a 28-turbine wind farm, the largest yet built in New England, began operating in December. Residents say that town officials and company representatives repeatedly assured them that the wind farm would be silent. Instead, they say, the windmills have disrupted their mountainside idyll. On days with low cloud cover, when the pulsing, rushing noise is loudest, wind farm neighbors say it can disrupt their sleep and drown out the rushing brook that was once the only sound here. “It changes your whole feeling about being in the woods,” said Tammie Fletcher, whose mountainside house boasts floor-to-ceiling views of the ridge where the windmills now stand.

A wind-power project for the western mountains that was rejected by the state's Land Use Regulation Commission last year is back with a new angle. Endless Energy Corp. founder Harley Lee, of Yarmouth, is proposing to restore his 30-turbine project in Redington Township by having Carrabassett Valley annex about 10,000 acres in the adjacent township that his corporation owns.

A Canadian energy company plans to apply for a permit to construct a $250 million to $300 million wind farm on two mountains in northern Franklin County, a company official said Tuesday. TransCanada will file an application with Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission within the next 30 days, the company’s project manager, Nick Di Domenico said.

A citizens group that opposes a proposed $120 million wind farm on Rollins Mountain has acquired a headquarters, a Web site and is in talks with an attorney, leading members said Wednesday. The Friends of Lincoln Lakes hopes to use the Web site, friendsoflincolnlakes.org, as a magnet for others statewide and nationwide who oppose or want to learn about wind farms such as those proposed by First Wind of Massachusetts.

As many as 30 town residents have signed on to an effort to overturn the recent planning board decision to approve a $12 million wind power project on Beaver Ridge, according to one of the opponents. Steven Bennett, who owns land abutting the site of the proposed project, said a formal appeal of the decision was filed Saturday.

FREEDOM — A plan to put wind turbines on Beaver Ridge is becalmed again. Steve Bennett and his family have appealed the planning board’s approval of the project. In a one page letter, Bangor Attorney Edmond Bearor, who represented the Bennetts throughout the planning board hearing process, listed numerous instances in which Bearor believes the planning board should have rejected the application for lack of evidence. The letter was turned in to the town office on Saturday, the final day the ordinance allowed an appeal to be filed.

FREEDOM — The company that hopes to erect three wind turbines on Beaver Ridge worked on the cheap when it submitted its application to the Planning Board, according to attorney Ed Bearor. “It’s a mystery to me how a $10-$12 million project can be on such a skinflint budget when it comes to getting approval,” said Bearor, who represents Steve Bennett and other property abutters opposed to the project, during Thursday’s appeals board meeting. The board, which is considering overturning the Planning Board’s December decision to approve the project, was still meeting as of 8:30 p.m.

Members of the Board of Appeals asked sharp questions Thursday as they continued to review the wind power project proposed by Competitive Energy Services of Portland. Neighboring landowners have hired Bangor lawyer Edmond Bearor to press their case against the $12 million project, which would site three 400-foot-tall wind turbines atop Beaver Ridge to generate electricity for as many as 2,000 homes. As the board began to discuss the Planning Board’s decision to waive a requirement that CES prepare a storm water management plan, Addison Chase questioned whether the town’s code enforcement officer could adequately oversee construction activities on the site and the discontinued road that leads to it.