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Even though Maine electricity rate payers are directly funding the construction of solar panel farms, they are not considered “part owners” or given a discount on the electricity produced by them. Rather, they are forced to pay for solar electricity which costs at least twice as much as other sources of electricity currently available in the marketplace.

This legislation to extort money out of Maine electricity customers to give to solar farm companies was dreamt up and passed by the Democratic party in 2019. Legislators from Aroostook County who voted to support it were:

- Senator Michael Carpenter (D-Aroostook);
- Rep. John Martin (D-Eagle Lake);
- Rep. Roland Martin (D-Sinclair);
- Rep. David McCrea (D-Fort Fairfield); and
- Sen. Troy Jackson (D-Aroostook).

No Republicans from Aroostook County supported the legislation.

Last year, Maine Public Advocate, Bill Harwood - a Democrat - went against his party's reckless solar policy and told the truth about the solar farm grift by warning the legislature that it would directly cost Maine electricity rate payers $220 million per year for the next 20 years, totaling $4.4 billion. This is not money provided by grants (which still are derived from the tax payers) but rather, directly from newly-added charges on the electric bills. In 2021 and 2023, Republicans in the Maine legislature attempted to stop the solar farm grift but, being vastly outnumbered by Democrats, failed at both attempts. In the 2023 attempt, Harwood even backed the Republican bill (LD 1347), but to no avail. His own party wouldn't even listen to him. Drunk on power, and mystified by the false “climate change” narrative, the Democrats perpetuate their extortion racket against Mainers by continuing to force them to pay for the most expensive, inefficient and unreliable source of electricity on the planet - solar energy.

Rep. Roger Albert (R-Madawaska) was the first to speak at the public hearing. He noted the inefficiency of solar panels. He said that we are too far north for solar panels to be efficient and noted that neighboring Canada has not even adopted a solar energy policy. “Someone needs to understand that our sunlight here does come in, but, 'hot dog', the days are short and come in wintertime they're even shorter.

According to turbinegenerator.org, Maine ranks 28th out of 50 in sunlight and only receives 101 clear sunny days per year - or around 3 months - and that's if the sun is shining bright enough to cast a shadow (the necessary brightness for solar panels to work). Furthermore, in order for solar panels to produce electricity at their full rated specifications the sun needs to be directly in front of (perpendicular to) the panels. This only happens for a few hours out of the day, or the “peak” sunlight hours. turbinegenerator.org notes that Maine only receives 5.2 hours of peak sunlight per day in the summer and 3.56 hours per day in the winter - and that's only if the sun isn't being obstructed by clouds!

Rep. Albert also reminded the audience about the issues with snow on solar panels. “I think most of you might remember when Houston, Texas three or four years ago had snow showers. [It] covered their solar panels and [they] were out of electricity - power from those panels - for two weeks. Just the statistics of where we're at, to me doesn't make sense. There are other ways, I would imagine, that we can produce electricity. Again, I won't get into the specifics, but let your imagination go wild.”

Rep. Albert also noted that a lot of Maine’s prime farmland is now being occupied by solar panel facilities. With solar panels mounted on a multitude of concrete pillars buried in the ground, these farmland plots would have to undergo very expensive removal of those pillars if it was ever desired to turn them back into food-producing areas again. “We're not the state to profit from solar panels.” said Rep. Albert.

Since the sun doesn't always shine (i.e. overcast clouds and nighttime), a series of battery power stations must also be built. The Honorable Sue Bernard, former State Representative from Caribou, spoke on the battery storage issue next. She noted how the town of Lincoln recently received a federal grant of $147 million to build a battery power storage station. But, the state will need dozens of these facilities to store excess electricity - if the solar farms ever could create a continual excess under the mostly overcast skies in Maine. These power storage facilities are collectively estimated to cost an additional several billion dollars in addition to the four billion dollars Mainers will be paying for the solar panel farms. This is money Maine people simply do not have to give away for free to fund the Democrats' Green Energy Dreams. “We really didn't talk much about storage back in the day when we first talked about 'let's get solar panels up' and all of that. We really didn't mention it because the money we were going to need to put into that program to begin with was so astronomical,” said Bernard. “To get incentives for people and for businesses to set up solar farms, it was going to be very, very expensive to begin with.”

On the storage facility in Lincoln, Bernard noted that is just the first one. “The first one is $147 million. That's just the first one. We're going to be needing more of those and we're going to need to maintain all of them.” While the Lincoln storage facility is being funded by a federal grant, Bernard reminds the audience that all grants are of money which is ultimately taken from the taxpayers.

The batteries in storage farms have a lifetime of around seven years at which time they will all need to be replaced with new batteries. Currently, there is no technology in place to recycle these types of batteries so they are being ground up to dust and stored until, or if, an efficient and scalable way to recycle them can be developed. Furthermore, the batteries in solar farms, electric vehicles, etc. are very quirky and flighty - prone to spontaneous combustion on a whim. Once these batteries catch fire, the fire department is powerless to put them out since water actually “fuels” the chemical process that creates the fire in the first place. Last year, in Australia, a major battery grid storage facility caught fire and burned for days. People in the area were told to stay indoors because the toxic gasses being spewed by the burning batteries could kill them. This is the type of technology the Democrats in government are now pushing on society, leading some to wonder if this is really about “protecting the climate?”

Lucian Daigle, a candidate for the Maine House of Representatives (Fort Kent) this year, spoke about how the high cost of electricity is also affecting food prices. “The cost of groceries has increased tremendously,” said Daigle. “If we look at the impact electricity has on a grocery store, it's just unbelievable. Every time you go into a store, you got all these open coolers; you got freezers that we open the doors and close them I don't know how many times a day. Every time you do that, cold air comes out, you got to re-cool it, it takes a lot of electricity. Their electric rates are going to go up maybe four or five times...the store cannot absorb that type of cost, so it's passed on to the consumer.” He also noted how the entire food production chain also gets hit with higher electricity prices from the farmer to the processor to the store, all the way to paying for the electricity for the freezer that keeps food frozen in the home. While Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris blames all these price increases on “price gouging” she and her handlers seem to be woefully disconnected from the reality that is going on out here in the real world hundreds and thousands of miles away from the granite and marble towers they inhabit in the District of Columbia.

Rep. Donny Ardell, from Monticello spoke further on the economic impact of rate payers being forced to pay for solar farms. “Maine's energy policy creates energy that's so expensive to not just run a home, but to run a business, we're actually driving business expansion out of the state,” said Rep. Ardell. “We're not being attractive to businesses that would come here to provide good anchor jobs to communities. And anyone interested in any type of economic development - aside from maybe building a solar field - would essentially go elsewhere and we’re getting beat on the national stage by states that are providing much more attractive energy environments and economic environments for businesses to come to.”

Ardell said currently there is a cap on how much hydro power Maine can buy and the Republicans tried to remove that cap at a recent legislative session but it was defeated by the Democrats. “[Hydropower] is renewable, it's clean, it runs day or night whether the sun is shining, or not. We have no reason or need to build or buy [electricity] storage facilities,” said Rep. Ardell. “It's good, solid technology. And the reason hydropower technology is legislatively repressed is because it's such a better product than solar. There's no way solar can compete against it for steady, reliable delivery or cost.”

“The state actually has a cap on how much hydropower we can generate,” said Bernard. “That was determined a number of years ago, around the year 2010. And they put a cap on it. And the reason they said they put a cap on hydropower was because it's ‘not renewable.’”

Obviously, the Democrats who think hydropower is not renewable need to return to their fifth-grade science class where the water cycle was described.

Actually, the true reason Democrats don't want hydropower to be part of the energy equation is they want to force people to pay enormous amounts of money for the inferior and inefficient solar farms as the way forward. Their strategy appears to be to bankrupt Maine citizens while concomitantly starving them of electrical energy in order to more easily control them. Yet, voters continue to elect them to office.

Paul Towle illustrated just how wide a gap there is in the price of hydropower versus solar. “By cost-competitive, I'll give you the numbers. It's about four or five cents a kilowatt-hour for hydro,” said Towle. “Guess what our solar developers - of which ninety percent are out of state developers, by the way - do you know how much they're getting paid? About twenty-four cents a kilowatt-hour.”

That is a six times price increase for solar energy costs versus hydropower.

In closing, Bernard reminded the audience that Versant is not to be blamed for the recent price increases to the electric bills. “Be careful, in this room, that we're not blaming too much on Versant. Versant is passing through the cost of this policy that the state has adopted. The state has adopted 'we're going to do solar and here's how much it's going to cost' and 'Versant, you're going to have to pass through these costs to your customers.’”

“The legislature determines the rate that you're paying,” said Daigle. “It's not Versant, CMP or the PUC. So, we need to change the legislature. You guys vote for representatives and Senators that will speak for you, or not. Find somebody who will speak for you.”

A video of this public hearing is available from WFFJ-TV online at: www.rumble.com/WFFJ