Large Wind Power Plants Planned for Maine and Pennsylvania

March 10, 2004

Three new wind power projects aim to boost wind energy production in the eastern United States, including the first large commercial wind power facility in the state of Maine. Evergreen Wind Power, LLC and the Town of Mars Hill have applied to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to build a 40- to 50-megawatt wind power plant in Mars Hill, located near Presque Isle in northern Maine. Meanwhile, Generation Resources Holding Company LLC (GRHC) is planning to build a 30-megawatt and a 45-megawatt wind power project, both in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The larger of the two projects gained momentum on February 5th, as FirstEnergy Corporation agreed to buy 20 years of power output from the facility, called StonyCreek WindPower. GRHC expects StonyCreek to be complete late this year, and the smaller facility to be complete by early 2005. See the Evergreen Wind Power and GRHC Web sites.

Note that the StonyCreek facility will have enough wind turbines to generate 64.8 megawatts of power, but GRHC is only building a 45-megawatt connection to the power grid, since it's rare that all the turbines would be generating full power at the same time. For this reason, FirstEnergy refers to the facility as a 65-megawatt wind plant, but GRHC refers to it as a 45-megawatt wind plant. See the FirstEnergy press release.