Renewables already added a 47 percent surcharge to electric bills at the beginning of this year. Now we're going to see something worse. The big, power-consuming manufacturers have been exempted from these charges so they can stay competitive with the rest of the world, but everyone else is going to bear the brunt.

A certain degree of local congestion and general oversupply is often planned into the system. However, given the relatively narrow operating margins of wind and solar projects, typical project leverage ratios and the debt service coverage ratio covenants by which most projects are bound, an annual curtailment of generating capacity of more than one percent can have a devastating impact on project viability.

"Wind power is an open trough of government subsidies, tax credits and state mandates. Taken together, it's a massive corporate welfare effort that means big money for the wind power developers and big costs for the rest of us." Loren Steffy, the Houston Chronicle. ...competitively priced goods or services cease to be the primary concern of the producer. Courting government agencies and influencing laws becomes the chief goal.

Europe's energy consumers must pay 20 cents per kWh generated, plus an additional 5 cents per kWh for transmission costs. They must pay this regardless of whether they need the electricity at the moment, and despite the fact that a kWh of wind electricity is worth less than 3 cents on the Leipzig Power Exchange, due to the intermittent and highly variable nature of wind.

We're not opposed to new energies, just the notion that taxpayers - and, potentially, a huge pool of rate payers - must subsidize their viability. Congress needs a thorough debate on this issue as well as other attempts to implement green and global warming policy through federal regulatory agencies.

It is likely there will be both economic and regulatory pressure for those projects to piggyback on the Galloo Island transmission line. ...And the wind farm developers get to optimize their returns and the landowners who are negatively affected by all this will get squat. And the taxes the developers will save with their PILOT agreements will help pay for all this - which is a lot more sad than ironic.

Landowners across the Hill Country are learning that their pristine private property is now going to be condemned for a 260-foot right-of-way so the state can install 180 foot tall towers on their land. And, when the electricity starts to flow, they can't even tap into it because it will be a "pass-through" that only benefits big city users. ...So, landowners are relegated to spending their hard-earned money fighting utility companies, hiring lawyers to argue in front of administrative law judges, and showing up at public hearings only to be ignored and mocked by arrogant bureaucrats paid by our tax dollars.

We must today be wary of the advocates of particular energy sources and control schemes. New technologies are "good" if their implementation results in improved outcomes. Before implementing costly new generation resources or "smart grid" schemes, we need to have agreement on what goals we are trying to accomplish, determine to what extent certain technologies can help achieve those goals, and evaluate whether the net cost is acceptable, both in terms of dollars and impairment of individual freedom.

Maine faces two starkly different choices about the future of its electrical system. On one hand is a plan by Central Maine Power to spend $1.5 billion on massive upgrades to the electric grid. This would make CMP's current "dumb grid" even bigger and dumber; ...On the other hand is an alternative proposal by GridSolar to build a smarter grid; one that is based on energy efficiency and clean, renewable power generated right here in Maine.

At the center of the back-and-forth between the Maine Public Utilities Commission and warring energy developers is a question of whether industrial-sized wind farms are feasible in Maine. ...The transmission line issue is not new to the PUC or to state and industry leaders who promote wind-power development in Maine. But it may come as a surprise to much of the public who see wind power as a clean form of energy that comes with little or no environmental cost.