In earlier centuries, the Gulf of Maine was a busy area where many boats depended on the blustery winds of the area to move them from one locale to another. It has been referred to as the “Saudi Arabia of wind”. These days, it is a group known as Fox Islands Wind that is looking to capture the airstream in order to use it for electricity. Their plan is to offer the villages of the Vinalhaven and North Haven the generated electricity at a much reduced rate.
These districts, however, and several more that use wind turbine power right now, are facing a problem. Along Maine’s coastline, specifically during the winter months. The wind is extremely strong, and this means that there is excess power created. At the present time there really is no way to simply store this power and the result is mass amounts of energy are lost into the air as heat and is going unused.
According to Philip Conklin, who is the president of the Islands Institute, which focuses on the development of communities located around the Gulf of Maine, claims there is a fantastic potential for using wind turbine generated power in a way that would heat people’s residences in the very cold winter months. The State of Maine normally has tremendously frigid winters.
The faction that is heading up this plan, the Monhegan Plantation Power Plant District, was originally put into place so it could offer centralized power from their hub to the small isle region of Monhegan. One suggestion is to provide a small facsimile of the smart grid scenario that would run commercial electric heaters turning them off and on based on the power of the wind at a particular time. Yet another idea is transporting the power through to a district greenhouse, which combined with photovoltaic’s, they could service a community garden and grow crops that they could eat or sell. These schemes have drawn some support from Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, who is trying to find some federal financing to aid in the development of their program.
If this plan ever takes hold and it becomes a greater opportunity for more communities, it would bring some much-needed assistance to Maine’s constituents; currently the state relies on heating oil in order to make homes comfortable and does so in greater amounts than any other area of the country. People living in Maine were hit hard by extremely high heating oil prices during last year’s winter season. The state of Maine is nowhere near being an economic strength, since it’s average income falls below the national median and it’s senior citizen populace is quite high based on numbers given to the U.S. Census. What this shows is Maine has a high number of people who exist on fixed incomes, and quite a few of them have difficulty covering their heating expenses as the cost of heating their homes skyrockets.
It is hoped that when these projects are launched, when they become successful it will drop the cost of heating oil due to a reduction in demand.
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