Posted on 04/08/2021 8:56:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For nearly two decades, commercial wind farms have been touted in Maine as a way to generate electricity without pollution, and as a way rural locales in Maine can generate revenue for themselves by hosting turbines worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But several counties and towns are finding out they are getting less revenue out of the wind projects than they had expected when they were wooed in the 2000s and 2010s by developers looking to erect turbines several hundred feet tall along local remote, elevated ridgelines. In some cases, the developers are arguing that recent advancements in wind turbine technology have made newer models so efficient that older, less efficient turbines erected nearly a decade or more ago have lost much of their taxable value.
In Franklin County, Maine Revenue Services granted a tax abatement on the Kibby Wind Power project that last month forced county officials to return $187,844 in tax-increment financing, or TIF, payments to Helix Maine Wind, which owns the 44-turbine wind farm.
In Hancock County, state officials granted an abatement to another wind farm, TerraForm-owned Bull Hill Wind, that is forcing the county to return $17,342 it had received in TIF payments last year for the 19 turbines erected in that county’s unorganized territory in 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at bangordailynews.com ...
I don’t get it. If there is demand and it makes money, why are taxpayers rebating? OK, I can see but maybe not fully agree with why they should get the property taxes waived if they are doing some good for the community. But why is money slushing around back and forth?
Why not replace the older turbines with new efficient models?
Widespread horrendous visual blight, ruined irreplaceable magnificent vistas, chopping up raptors, low frequency “thrump, thrump, thrump,” long flickering shadows, extremely low capacity factor, high consumption of concrete and steel per kW, blades that cannot be recycled, cannot make it economically without massive subsidies or mandates to buy wind power.
What’s not to like?
Erections have consequences......................
Touché. Law of conservation of electrical charge is not optional.
TIF is a scam. Local pols get suckered into it every time.
What’s important here is the MESSAGE these windmills send, not whether they generate power, and that message is that the people of Maine CARE and are willing to do what it takes to keep the planet from being destroyed (no different than those buying a Tesla, by the way).
To sell wind turbines the amortize them over 50 years. The turbines are dead in around 20. They only survive with subsides.
This is like in Cary NC here. They put traffic cameras everywhere. and...
1) All the rich folks were getting tickets.
2) They found out only 13 cents of every $ went to the town.
Love it as none of the cameras have been in use for a few years now!
Same in California. The cities contracted out to private companies that maintain the cameras. They read your DL and send a photo ticket in the mail. The city gets a small cut, but they figured it is found money since they couldn’t possibly pay for the installation and maintenance at every intersection.
Fortunately, after many legal battles a judge ruled them unenforceable. You cannot cross examine a camera or the guy who built the machine that sends the ticket in the mail. Nobody will show up to testify that yes, indeed, that is you driving the car. For a while they kept sending out the tickets but payment of the fine was voluntary. Eventually the cities just shut the damn things off.
And of course, more than a few people got a ticket in the mail, the spouse opened it and saw a stranger in the passenger seat. LOL. They eventually cropped the photos to just show the driver and the license plate because those tickets led to a number of divorces.
LOL. I realize that is a gif but do you know the origin? What caused the fires? Bird strike? Lightening strike? Friction and oil/grease at the turbine?
How did two of them get lit up at the same time?
Sorry guys, I don’t know the origin or story behind the gif. I just searched google for ‘burning windmill animated gif’ and picked the best one.
NC redlight cameras got shot down by the courts years ago because the state constitution requires 100% of those fines to go to the school systems.
Plus plenty of free pre-chopped bird meat at the base of the turbines!
No! All the rich folks coming out and going into Preston were getting tickets.
The the Raleigh N&O did an investigation and news article on WHO was running those cameras and the $ split.
How do I know? Cause I live here.
[[LOL. I realize that is a gif but do you know the origin? What caused the fires?]]
Birds freebasing on the units when noone was looking
Well then it’s stupid. It provides intermittent power depending on the weather. It can’t be run profitably. Might as well be useless. What’s the difference then between taxpayers rebating the wind farms, and just charging the users of electricity more money? Just shuffling money around so the taxpayers don’t see the true cost every month in their bill.
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