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07/03/2008

Central Maine Power and Maine Public Service announced Tuesday they planned to undertake a $1.9 billion upgrade of the state’s power transmission system. Two projects have been proposed:

• Under a federal mandate to ensure the reliability of the power transmission grid, Central Maine Power, or CMP, the state’s largest utility company, must update a significant portion of the state’s almost 40-year-old grid. That will cost up to $1.4 billion and include 350 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines that will wind through almost 80 communities between Orrington, Maine, and Newington, N.H.

• To connect northern Maine electricity customers to the New England transmission grid (thus giving them access to competitive sources of electricity), and to accommodate the increased transmission capacity needed by proposed wind generation projects, both CMP and Maine Public Service propose to build a $500 million, 200-mile-long new transmission line from central Maine to northern Aroostook County. Currently, the 36,000 customers of Maine Public Service in northern Maine are connected to the power grid in New Brunswick, Canada.

Now comes the hard part. While the language of utility regulation is opaque and confusing to anyone but the most seasoned observer or member of the field, this is important stuff with ramifications for each and every Mainer.

Electricity demands in Maine have doubled since the last power grid upgrade in 1971, and population has grown by 32 percent and shifted to the southern and coastal parts of the state. That’s put increased stress on the system; CMP proposes to relieve that stress, and accommodate future demand, with the transmission line upgrade.

In addition, as everyone knows, the price of oil — which provides a significant amount of Maine’s power — has skyrocketed, while we now know that burning that oil contributes to global warming. The second plan will promote the construction of alternative energy by providing wind power generators in The County with a way to get their power to markets farther south.

But all of this will cost a huge amount of money, almost $2 billion. And those new transmission lines will have an effect on the environment, as well as your electricity bill. There are legitimate questions about whether the power companies have adequately factored in the effect of greater energy conservation as they planned this expansion of transmission capacity.

Right now, both CMP and Maine Public Service say that Maine’s ratepayers will likely pay for only 8 percent of the projects’ costs, but that number can easily rise if the other folks who are in line to pay (the regional electricity cooperative called ISO-New England) object to covering the remaining 92 percent of the cost.

So both projects face an array of regulatory and procedural hurdles before putting up one pole or stringing up one line. ISO-New England must consider the plans and render its verdict on how much it is willing to cover of the costs. Permits and approvals are needed on multiple levels from the state and individual towns, and permitting bodies may ask for changes to the plan.

As part of its consideration of these massive projects, Maine Public Utilities Commission, or PUC, has appropriately said it will include “public witness hearings,” at which citizens can make their thoughts and concerns known. While those hearing dates have yet to be set, you can check on the PUC Web site, www.state.me.us/mpuc/index.html, for notice about the schedule.

On the state level, the review of such a complex plan may be even more of a challenge than usual, as the PUC has been operating with only two out of its three members since Chairman Kurt Adams unexpectedly left earlier this year.

Gov. John Baldacci will do both the PUC and Maine ratepayers a service by nominating a qualified new PUC member as quickly as possible. And the PUC will do Mainers a whole lot of good if it does everything within its power to keep ratepayers’ costs for these projects as low as possible.

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