Central Maine Power Co.’s $1.4 billion transmission system upgrade isn’t designed to handle the power that can be made available at times from new and existing alternative energy plants.
This story is increasingly common. Renewable energy is widely distributed and can flucuate instantly in amounts of power generation, something traditional grids aren’t designed to handle. Even with the upgrade, the new Maine grid will have stability problems at an interconnection where it sends large amounts of power south to other New England states.
“One of the effects could be that Connecticut would go dark,” said Tony Buxton, a Portland lawyer who represents large energy users in Maine.
What a waste of money and resources. Permanent magnetic generators would solve the power problems of today and of the future. The only problem is it would put the electric companies out of business as well as the oil industry (except for plastics). It’s amazing how if there is an invention that will generate revenue for a company then it hits the consumer market asap, but when there is an invention that saves consumers a lot of money there is opposition from those who it would ruin their business model if it were to hit the consumer market. Just look how long it took for electric cars to hit the market and we’ve had that technology for decades. I would hate to have to wait decades for free energy to become a reality simply due to greed.