Five years after the legislature ordered it, Maine has picked who builds the wind farm and who builds the wire.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission selected Clearway Energy Group on August 25 to develop an 800 MW onshore wind farm in southeast Aroostook County, and Avangrid, parent of Central Maine Power, to build a 1,200 MW high-voltage line from Pittsfield to Haynesville that connects it to the New England grid.
One project, most of a state’s fleet
Maine currently has roughly 900 MW of land-based wind generation in total. This single farm is 800 MW. That is not an incremental addition to a portfolio; it’s a doubling, on commercial timberland that is unincorporated, has existing road access, and sits near an existing transmission right-of-way. Those three site attributes are why it is buildable at all.
The transmission award turned on the same logic. Commissioners cited CMP’s planned use of existing corridors as a deciding factor over competing routes, which is the standard tiebreaker in New England transmission siting and has been since the Northern Pass fight.
The cost allocation is the unusual piece. Maine purchases 600 MW; the balance goes to other New England states, and ratepayers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island share the transmission construction cost. Multi-state cost sharing on a single state’s procurement is rare, and it is what makes a 1,200 MW line to Aroostook County pencil.
What has not happened yet
PUC Chair Phil Bartlett said the project will save Maine customers “at least $387 million” over its lifetime and cited $2.4 billion in economic output and thousands of construction jobs. Those are commission model outputs, not audited figures, and the job count is not stated as a specific number anywhere. Treat all three as projections.
More to the point for contractors: selection is not a contract. No EPC firm, turbine supplier or notice-to-proceed date has been named. Department of Environmental Protection siting and land-use permits are still ahead, and the Aroostook corridor has drawn landowner opposition along the route. The statutory basis is a 2021 law, and it took five years of docket to get to a name. The next phase is where the schedule actually gets tested.
Related on Exchange: the Kingston gas plant replacement in Tennessee.
Sources: Maine Public, August 25, 2026; Bangor Daily News.