WILTON – The Planning Board discussed a Central Maine Power substation proposed at a Main Street location and the potential of installing a solar power farm behind the business park on the Weld Road.
The substation project would serve as an upgrade for the existing substation on the Temple Road, which CMP officials and engineers associated with the project said was not capable of handling the installation of modern equipment. They propose to build a new, 34.5 kV substation on property at 1228 Main Street, utilizing a preexisting transmission line that passes nearby. The new substation would improve the reliability and stability of the system, planners said Thursday.
Both the old substation and the new, proposed substation on Main Street in East Wilton would be used to bring power to customers in Wilton and the surrounding communities. The substation project is completely unrelated to the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line, planners said in response to a question from the board.
According to James Morin, the project engineer and an employee of Burns & McDonnell, the existing station cannot meet the area’s needs, cannot accommodate modern-day equipment and would be difficult to replace at its present location. In addition to being too small, CMP noted in its site plan review application, the Temple Road substation has a number of components supported by wooden foundations. The project would result in that site being decommissioned and returned to a natural vegetated state.
The Main Street lot in East Wilton is 5.3 acres. The new site would consist of a crushed stone yard, 160 by 140 feet in size, surrounded by an eight-foot-tall chain link fence, roughly 90 feet back from the edge of the roadway. Within the fence would be the transformers, as well as space for a mobile transformer should one be necessary during an outage, and a single-story control building. The location would be unmanned, Morin said. CMP’s landscaping plan calls for trees and other vegetation to be planted around the substation to help screen it from view.
There would be small, downward-facing lights near the entrances, planners said, with brighter ones available if emergency maintenance needed to be performed at night. The humming sound created by the transformers would fall below Wilton’s requirements at the property lines, particularly after the screening vegetation had been installed.
The project already has acquired its state permits and now seeks local planning board approval. If that was granted at the next meeting, CMP officials said they intend to break ground in the next quarter, completing the project in 2020.
The board has scheduled a site walk through at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 15 at the Main Street location. A public hearing will follow later that evening at 7 p.m. If CMP has met the local site plan requirements, approval could be granted by the board that evening.
The board also reviewed a preliminary request by Gil Reed, representing the Western Maine Development Group LLC, to allow Dirigo Solar LLC construct and operate a solar farm. In this early iteration, the panels would mostly be located behind the business/industrial park at 128 Weld Road, although Reed said that he was also pushing to have Dirigo Solar install them on the roof.
While Dirigo Solar would lease space from Western Maine Development Group – the current proposal would occupy roughly 17 acres of space – Reed said the real benefit would be offering low electricity cost considerations to would-be tenants. Following the departure of Barclays in March, Reed said that he was doing everything he could to avoid tearing down buildings.
“We’re in survival mode,” Reed said. “I’m doing everything I can to stay afloat before tearing stuff down.”
Reed said that it was still very early in the process – he did not have engineering schematics or specifics about how much energy the site would generate. He said that he wanted to present the idea to the Planning Board prior to moving forward through the planning process with Dirigo Solar as the company studies the viability of the proposal.
The board voted unanimously to provide conditional approval to Western Maine Development Group LLC’s Application For Use to allow the study to move forward, noting as part of the motion that a full site plan review would be required prior to any construction.
Does anyone think to ask CMP the details of difficult questions? If the present station cannot meet the area needs…what are we running on now? Someone rubbing two sticks together? The station we have now cannot handle ‘modern’ equipment and difficult to replace at the present location. What kind of answer is that ? Is this new project for convenience for CMP? What about this nearby transmission line?
More details of why CMP wants to build nearer this line are in order. CMP already has the permits????
Who has already been paid off for this arrangement?
Why are the citizens of Wilton and all over Maine always having to fight and defend the beauty of our town and state against a foreign company that has again pushed for another rate increase.
I believe that our Wilton Town Officials should stop being a ‘grease path’ for any company that proposes something new that at the same time reaches into the pockets of the taxpayer. How about fixing the roads people go to work on before anything else?
How about putting the ‘New CMP’ sub station on the
pad at the old mill we just paid to have torn down?
It is time to push back and push back hard and it starts at the Wilton Town Office.
I agree 100 percent. The idea to move it on the old mill pad. I’d vote yes to that
I would like to ask Mr, Lion Roars why he was not at the town meeting to ask his own more difficult questions? All of the questions were answered specifically and completely had he been in the presence of the presentation and not relying on an incomplete newsprint article; they have limited spacing. Mr. eagle soars should come to the site review on the 15th and see for yourself the why of this project.