The Road To New England -- December 13, 2014; Was It Memorex Or Was It Real? Massachusetts Setting The Pace On Wind Energy Projects

From The New York Times:

SALEM, N.H. — John York, who owns a small printing business here, nearly fell out of his chair the other day when he opened his electric bill.

For October, he had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room shop, his bill came to $788, a staggering increase of 110 percent. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “We can’t go on like this.”

For months, utility companies across New England have been warning customers to expect sharp price increases, for which the companies blame the continuing shortage of pipeline capacity to bring natural gas to the region.

Now that the higher bills are starting to arrive, many stunned customers are finding the sticker shock much worse than they imagined. Mr. York said he would have to reduce his hours, avoid hiring any new employees, cut other expenses and ultimately pass the cost on to his customers.

There is much, much more at the link, including how prices are broken down, compared to the rest of the US, and what to expect later this winter. But this is what it's all about:

The utilities argue that they are hamstrung unless they can increase the pipeline capacity for natural gas, which powers more than half of New England. That would not only lower costs for consumers, they say, but also create thousands of construction jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue.

The region has five pipeline systems now. Seven new projects have been proposed. But several of them — including a major gas pipeline through western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, and a transmission line in New Hampshire carrying hydropower from Quebec — have stalled because of ferocious opposition.

I can only assume Pocahontas is leading the opposition, but her name, interestingly enough is not mentioned in the article.

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Meanwhile global warming is taking its toll on the folks next door in Vermont. The AP is reporting:

BERLIN, Vt. (AP) — About 6,000 customers were still without power in Vermont on Saturday evening, three days after a brutal storm pounded the state with heavy, wet snow and caused the worst outages in years.

Gov. Peter Shumlin and the head of the Vermont Electric Cooperative surveyed power line and tree damage by air as line crews continued to restore service to those still in the dark from outages that, at their peak, affected some 100,000 customers. Restoring power to everyone could take at least the weekend, officials said.

"It was an extremely difficult storm," said Shumlin, who said 7 to 8 inches of snow was visible from the air encasing power lines in some spots. Parts of Vermont received more than a foot of snow Tuesday and Wednesday, including 19.5 inches in Orwell.

The helicopter tour covered Stowe, Starksboro, Richmond and Hinesburg — which Shumlin said was hit hard. Green Mountain Power — the state's largest utility — said the outages are worse than those caused by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 or a serious 1998 ice storm.

More than 1,000 people are working to clear lines, Shumlin said.

And they're enduring tough conditions. One line crew hiked through a snowy woods with 80 pounds of equipment to repair a line, which took several hours, only to have to return twice for breaks in similar spots, said GMP spokeswoman Kristin Carlson.

Washington Electric Cooperative had 1,700 members still without power on Saturday and said it would be through the weekend or even longer before the service is restored.

I believe the "global warming" town meeting scheduled for this weekend has been postponed.

This "global warming" isn't all bad news. There are some industries that like cooler weather. The Minneapolis St Paul StarTribune is reporting:

The bracing chill of a Minnesota winter doesn’t make for alluring tourism slogans, but there is an industry beyond dogsledding in which it’s a selling point: data centers.

Selling all that cold air to tech companies that need to keep towers of computers from overheating has become the work of people like Tom Lambrecht, manager of economic development services for the utility cooperative Great River Energy.

This year, after a slow start, it appears more companies have begun checking out the cold, with three newly opened data centers becoming the first applicants for a new Minnesota sales tax rebate for the industry. Seven more projects are in the queue behind them. Great River Energy, meanwhile, has searched among its membership for the best sites in Minnesota to place a new data center.

And so it goes.  So was it Memorex or was real? Was it the cold or the "new Minnesota sales tax rebates for the tech industry."  We will never know with this kind of reporting. We had to read pretty far into the article to get the note on "sales tax rebates." I normally don't read that far into an article but something sounded ... fishy? After all, it's just as cold in Massachusetts and they have a bigger IT customer base than Minnesota. Whatever.

Oh, that's right. Data centers are huge users of electricity. Huge. Go back to the top story above about the cost of electricity in Massachusetts. Folks aren't leaving Massachusetts for Minnesota for the cold. Tax rebates and costs of electricity might be more reasonable explanations. 

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By The Way, How's Cape Wind Coming Along?

This is the most recent update; Cape Wind is still in court, October 13, 2014. Apparently Cape Wind developers are taking on the US Constitution in their quest to raise the utility bills for the residents of Massachusetts.

Along the way, one might be interested to see how Massachusetts compares with the rest of the nation with regard to wind energy: #34 (North Dakota is #6; Texas, #1: and, California, #2). Massachusetts has all of 107 MW of wind energy installed, essentially single-turbine units for universities and the like. The state has 45 wind projects on-line, 83 wind turbines; and no projects are currently under construction (data is current through 3Q14, so it is very, very current -- apparently not even Cape Wind.

The narratives are always very enthusiastic; the numbers tell a vastly different story.