Maine has spent five years and two procurements trying to get wind power out of Aroostook County. On August 25 it named winners. The part that matters is not the wind farm.

Developments dated August 21 – September 5, 2026 — a short window, about two weeks rather than the usual month.

Maine: the award lands, and it comes with a line

The Public Utilities Commission announced the results of the Northern Maine Renewable Energy Development Program RFP on August 25. Clearway Energy Group will build an 800 MW onshore wind project on commercial timberland in unincorporated southeastern Aroostook County — the largest in a state with roughly 900 MW of land-based wind today. Avangrid, Central Maine Power’s parent, was named preferred developer of a 1,200 MW transmission line running about 111 miles from Haynesville to Pittsfield, mostly along corridors CMP already owns.

Maine contracts for about 600 MW of the output; the rest goes to the other participating states. Chair Phil Bartlett put the net benefit to Maine ratepayers at at least $387 million over the projects’ life, with Maine carrying less than 11 percent of the transmission cost — because this is a five-state deal, joined by Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont. Commissioner Patrick Scully on the structure: “I’ve not seen anything like this in the United States.”

The line is the point. The 2023 attempt collapsed not because nobody wanted to build wind in Aroostook but because the transmission negotiation failed, and northern Maine’s wind is worth nothing without a way to move it south. This award pairs the two and makes the generation explicitly contingent on the line proceeding. That is the lesson from last time, applied.

It also leaves room. The wind project uses 800 MW of the line’s 1,200 MW capacity, and the Commission has said it expects to solicit the remaining 400 MW in a further RFP.

Nothing is built yet. Contracts have to be finalised, the transmission element needs federal approval, and permitting and environmental review are years of work. The 2023 procurement also had winners once.

Maine: regulators put Versant on a performance plan

The PUC approved a stipulation on September 1 requiring Versant Power to work through a multipoint performance improvement plan — long-term strategic planning, better tracking of customer service and capital spending, faster renewable interconnection — and to put $400,000 into low-income customer programs.

It closes an investigation opened last year after a management audit found that Versant’s spending had climbed sharply since Enmax acquired it in 2020 without matching gains in service quality or operating metrics. Commissioners were not warm about it. One said it “feels at times that Versant needs to be monitored and told what to do, at a level that a competent and well run company should not require.” Versant serves about 166,000 customers, and the Commission signalled it intends to keep watching.

New Hampshire: a data center where the coal plant was

Federal filings surfaced in early September showing Eversource has agreed to study whether a 350 MW load could connect at the site of Merrimack Station in Bow — New England’s last big coal plant, retired in 2025. The study was requested by Granite Shore Power, which owns the site. An Eversource executive separately described a developer weighing something “up to 200 MW,” so the size is unsettled. Anything above 100 MW counts as hyperscale.

This is a viability study, not an application, and it may come to nothing. But it is worth noting what it would mean: a retired coal plant’s grid connection is exactly the asset a very large electricity consumer wants, and the interconnection capacity does not disappear when the boiler does. Eversource says it must give transmission information to any developer who asks, while adding that it is concerned about what large loads do to the grid. Governor Ayotte has said she supports a moratorium on data centers in the state.

New Hampshire: the nuclear road map is due

Under a March executive order, the Department of Energy has spent the summer building a nuclear road map for New Hampshire, including small modular reactors, on a preliminary September deadline. It follows a joint statement by all six New England governors in March committing to explore advanced nuclear.

The stakeholder sessions did not produce agreement. Consumer Advocate Don Kreis said “nobody has demonstrated a good or even plausible economic case.” An Eversource representative argued more in-state generation would not lower local rates, since New Hampshire already exports power. The road map has not been published.

Vermont: what the net-metering order actually did

Last month’s scan flagged that sources disagreed about which way Vermont’s biennial net-metering update had gone, and said not to publish a direction without reading the order. Read: the order was entered May 29 in Case 26-0291-INV, and it adopted the Department of Public Service’s recommended increase of $0.0231 per kilowatt-hour, bringing the statewide blended residential rate to $0.2071, effective August 1.

That sounds like good news for solar owners, and the reaction says otherwise — roughly 900 public comments, nearly all opposed. The blended rate is only the base that net-metering compensation is calculated from; siting and renewable-credit adjustors are applied on top of it, and those are where the argument is. A rising base and a falling net payment are not contradictory. This scan did not read the adjustors, so the honest summary is that the headline rate went up and the industry says new customers came out behind.

All three states now allow balcony solar

A quiet convergence, worth noting because it happened in about four months: Maine legalised plug-in solar in April, Vermont in June (Act 149, effective July 1), and New Hampshire in July.

Vermont’s is the one that has been enacted and read closely, and its details are more restrictive than the summaries suggest. The 1,200-watt cap is per meter, not per device. The building must be on a smart meter. And a plug-in device is ineligible for net metering — you cannot have both, and anything exported to the grid is not compensated at all. These are self-consumption devices by law; the value is in the electricity you avoid buying.

Against that, the act clears away most of what usually stops people. No Certificate of Public Good, no interconnection agreement, no utility approval, no fees, and no municipal bylaw may regulate the devices. It also overrides deed restrictions and covenants — including, explicitly, patio-railing rules in condominiums, cooperatives and apartments, which is the provision that makes balcony solar actually available to people who rent.

Worth watching next month

  • Maine — contract execution on the Clearway and Avangrid selections, and federal approval of the line. This is the stage where 2023 died.
  • Maine — the follow-on RFP for the remaining 400 MW of transmission capacity.
  • Maine — CMP’s pending distribution rate case, filed in April.
  • New Hampshire — the nuclear road map, and whether the Bow study becomes a real interconnection request.
  • New Hampshire — PUC rulemaking on plug-in solar ahead of SB 540’s January 1, 2027 effective date. Still nothing.
  • Regional — ISO-NE’s final report on the CMP/Eversource transmission proposal selected in July, which targets the same northern Maine generation.