Even as Vermont’s two largest electric utilities, Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service Company, put off signing a contract for electricity from the troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, they are arranging to buy power from a yet-to-be-built wind park in New Hampshire.
Vermont regulators have cleared the two electric companies to sign contracts for energy from Noble Environmental Power’s Granite Reliable wind park in Coos County, New Hampshire. The park is now under development, with construction expected to begin this summer. The two companies plan to buy some 4 percent of their power output from the Granite Reliable project for 20 years beginning in April, 2012. Together they will purchase 55.3 percent of the output of the park, which will produce 99 megawatts of power.
Granite Reliable’s corporate parent, Noble Environmental, which has as its majority owner J.P Morgan Partners Fund, started up in 2004, engaged in a wave of construction in 2008 and owns operating wind parks in Texas and upstate New York. The deal with Granite Reliable is part of a plan on the part of the state of Vermont to get 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. Green Mountain Power is also planning to build a wind farm of its own in Lowell, Vt. that will produce up to 63 megawatts.
