In Maine, Stored Solar LLC’s two wood-fired power plants, which received a $1.2 million state subsidy intended to keep them operating, were essentially offline for the last few months. The quarterly performance report showed that the plants only bought a tiny fraction of the biomass they promised to buy and had cut their workforce drastically. Stored Solar told the Portland Press Herald that the biomass power plants won’t restart until the fall at the earliest.
Fahim Samaha, one of Stored Solar’s principals told the Portland Press Herald that the reason the biomass power plants were offline was because “low wholesale electricity prices and values for renewable energy credits in New England have made operating the plants uneconomical at this time, even with the state subsidy,” and that “The purpose is to have a healthy operation and not burn taxpayers’ money in the boilers, just for the sake of benefiting from a subsidy.”