MassCEC Destroyed The Wind Industry In Massachusetts

MassCEC How It Destroyed The Wind Industry In Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, MassCEC was once known as the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, MTC.

AKA - The agency with an “agenda”

The agency was set up as a semi-quasi state agency to advance renewable energy in Massachusetts. The agency is funded by a renewable energy tax from all electric bills both commercial and residential. You the taxpayer pay for all this.

The first event in early 2005 was former State Rep Mark Howland and his company Windtech working with the state agency. The wind turbine company was charged in civil court for unscrupulous business practices. The charges were brought by former Attorney General Martha Coakley who today we know had always been a wind turbine advocate. Martha today works for a law firm that specializes in wind turbine installations. The former state representative moved to Hawaii and it was never made clear if he paid the fines. Nice work if you can get it!

The second event is the semi quasi agency buys two 1.65 megawatt Vestas commercial wind turbines that no one wants and gets stuck with the turbines at $3000.00 a month storage fees for years. Keep in mind the taxpayers are paying for the storage and turbines through the tax on their electric bills. This is a total embarrassment for the high paying agency full of high paying political hack jobs.

While in possession of the two massive megawatt turbines the agency prepares wind study reports for various towns like Mattapoisett that show the installation of much smaller kilowatt wind turbines.

Mattapoisett residents get a 23 page wind turbine report from the agency full of what the agency describes as “mistakes.” The agency skirts the Article 97 state land use law and installs a wind turbine test tower on Nasketucket Bay State Reservation. The agency gets caught misplacing data between several test towers and in Marion the next town over using average wind speeds for a year leaving out the lower months speeds of July and August.

So now for SE Massachusetts the jig is up. The agency gives up and puts the turbines up for auction - no one bids !

The agency goes to the Town of Falmouth and offers them one million of your tax money in advance to take the foreign made Vestas megawatt turbines off their hands. General Electric a domestic wind company had refused to build turbines in Falmouth because of setback issues.

Vestas wind company warns the Town of Falmouth in writing prior to the installations that their turbines produce 110 decibels of noise twice as loud as the specifications. The agency , MassCEC today admits they made acoustical noise mistakes prior to the installations and of course the state has found the turbines out of noise compliance. The Massachusetts Supreme Court found the Town of Falmouth guilty of breaking the zoning by laws devastating the health and property rights of the neighbors.

The agency forks over 1.8 million dollars of your tax dollars to help the Town of Falmouth pay their litigation fees against the tortured residents around the turbines. The agency is victimizing the victims again by trying to outspend the victims and make them move and we the taxpayers are footing the bill ?

Falmouth has two turbines. Falmouth Wind 1 the first turbine paid for by the agency and for some reason paid for again by the residents of Falmouth. The Falmouth Wind 2 turbine was paid for with federal stimulus money and is being paid for again by Falmouth residents. If you went to a store and they asked you the taxpayers to pay twice would you pay them ?

The MassCEC helped the Town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island purchase a 1.5 megawatt AAER wind turbine that failed after two years of operation and is today being removed.

Folks it gets worse

The MassCEC spent 50 million dollars building the Charlestown wind turbine blade testing facility. Why would taxpayers want a wind blade facility. The state took valuable infrastructure money that could have been used for the MBTA or bridge construction and spent it on a whim ? The wind turbine blades like anything else wear out get hit by lightning and have a short lifespan of around five years. The testing facility is useless

The final nail in the coffin is the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal a so called ocean wind turbine port. The incomplete financial fiasco stands well over 113 million dollars . The MassCEC is the owner of the fiasco. The MassCEC has borrowed massive amounts of Green energy bonds and state bonds to build the incomplete port. The MassCEC describes the port construction as going into phase two.

The monthly bond payments are over $187,500.00 a month for the next thirty years no one can afford to lease the port ! The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has done it again buying something that can’t be sold.

The port has no rail link.It remains 3000 feet from the port.

Here is the dirty little secret about the New Bedford wind turbine port that all the media and politicians don’y want you the taxpayers to know about.

The hurricane gates in New Bedford only have a legal width clearance of 120 feet. Wind turbine jack up barges world wide are 127 feet or wider. Jack up barges do not fit into New Bedford Harbor. They are building one small barge to fit through the gates. The problem now is since the construction started in New Bedford the size of the ocean wind turbines have tripled in size to 8 and 10 megawatt wind turbines.

Sooner or later the general public will catch on to the ongoing financial fiasco at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center

Massachusetts has not installed a megawatt wind turbine since 2013