Rumford, Maine 04276 ~ info@growrumford.com

The Power Potential

There's a lot of energy to be made in the Rumford area, but no easy way to get it to the people who will buy it

Rumford is rich in the potential for generating energy.  There is water power, wind power, vast supplies of wood and a natural gas pipeline which runs through town.  Three power plants in town already tap into this potential, and there's room for more. Could energy generation be the key to the economic revival of the area?  Maybe, but only if a creative approach were taken to overcome market and transmission problems.

The problem is there's no need for more power to be pumped into the electrical grid in Maine.  There's more generation in Maine than is needed for local use, and there just aren't enough wires to send it out.  "Transmission congestion prevents easy flow of electrons out of the state," explains Fred Bever, spokesman for the Maine Department of Utilities.  This gives Maine ratepayers a "bottleneck advantage", and as high as electric rates may seem to some, they would be higher still if Maine consumers had more competition for their power from consumers elsewhere.

A solution may lie in local sales.  One of the three power generators in town is Rumford Power, located in the Industrial Park.  The twin-turbine, natural-gas-fired plant is the largest power generator in town, with a capacity of 265 megawatts.  The other two power plants are the hydroelectric facilities at Rumford Falls, with 40 megawatts capacity, and the cogen facility at the New Page mill, with 85 megawatts.  In June, the hydroelectric dam, run by Brookfield Power Company,  received a federal "renewable energy tax credit" as part of an upgrade which will allow it to generate about 3 percent more power.

But the grid doesn't take all the power Rumford Power can make.  It is what is called a "merchant" plant, selling power into the New England grid only when market conditions make it profitable, according to Scott Fortuna, operations manager of the plant. As such, it is shut down certain days of the week. The plant is run by a consortium of three companies, following the bankruptcy of its previous owner, Calpine Energy.  The overall financial management is handled by Caithness Energy, the physical operation of the plant handled by a team from General Electric, and the marketing of the power handled by branch of Consolidated Edison, the New York power utility.

With Rumford Power or another power generator, selling locally could be be an addition to selling into the grid. For instance, a factory could locate near the Rumford Power facility, perhaps in the proposed Rumford Business Park, and buy its power on a direct line from the plant. A spokesperson for Central Maine Power notes that the utility would object to any such arrangement, since "after all we make money transmitting the power", but it is unclear if CMP would have any authority to interefere.  The market for energy within the New England power grid is supervised by an agency called ISO New England.  According to spokesperson Erin O'Brien of ISO New England, 75 percent of the power on the grid is already sold through "bilateral agreements" between a power generator and a buyer, usually a utility such as Central Maine Power.  The other 25 percent is sold on the spot market, which is managed by ISO New England.  As far as ISO New England is concerned, an arrangement to sell power directly from a power plant to a nearby large consumer would just be another bilateral agreement. Yet another restriction on new power generation in the Rumford area is the availability of transmission lines to handle more outgoing power.  The lines here now are adequate only for the generation now in place.

The Rumford Power Plant at the Industrial Park in Rumford

Additional power generation might require additional lines, and getting new lines in place is a lengthy process, with substantial government review, and the need, at times, for eminent domain proceedings to get the land needed for the towers and the poles.  Here too local sales could make the difference by avoiding the need to send the power elsewhere.

A creative approach would be to find a facility that needed a large amount of power and create a package tying together the new enterprise with new generation, or more generation from underused facilities such as Rumford Power. As companies approach the community with the idea of establishing new power generating facilities, the community could require, or at least urge, them to make an effort to find new, local customers - in other words, use the resources of the windpower or biomass companies that wish to locate here to help draw other employers and businesses to town. This might be done through the Planning Board, requiring the establishment of local customers a condition of site plan review approval.