Aug. 19--Editor's Note: This is the first in a three-part Bangor Daily News series covering plans for alternative energy projects on Maine's offshore islands.

Since their earliest days, residents of Maine's offshore islands have been known for being self-reliant, using what is immediately available to them in order to help sustain themselves.

The natural resources of these islands made them attractive to early colonists from Europe who were looking to establish permanent settlements in the Western Hemisphere. The islands had wind to move sailing vessels, trees to provide lumber for housing, and surrounding waters filled with fish to feed the islanders.

But myriad economic changes over the past century have had significant effects on these aspects of island living, prompting many island residents to look to the mainland for food, jobs or other resources. Now that some of these changes are becoming even more pronounced -- affecting mainlanders as well as island residents -- some Maine island communities are reconsidering natural resources that helped lead to their permanent settlement centuries ago.

Rapidly escalating energy costs is one of the biggest issues facing many of the island communities, island officials have said, and have led two groups of offshore Maine islands to tackle the issue head-on by pursuing wind power projects. The Fox Islands Electric Cooperative, which serves Vinalhaven and North Haven, and the Swan's Island Electric Cooperative, which serves Swan's Island and neighboring Frenchboro, each are looking into the possibility of erecting a few large wind turbines in order to help satisfy their electricity needs and perhaps even reduce electric bills for their members.

According to island officials, members of the two co-ops and residents of other islands that have their own electric power distribution entities pay rates that are roughly twice those paid by a typical residential customer on the mainland, and three times the national average. The average monthly electric bill on many of the islands, they say, is about $150.

"Electricity prices are killing us out here," said George Baker, a Harvard Business School professor and seasonal Frenchboro resident who has been working on the projects with the co-ops and the Rockland-based Island Institute. Baker, who is on sabbatical this year from Harvard so he can research the economic feasibility of the projects, also sits on the board of the Swan's Island Electric Cooperative.

According to Baker, the possibility of generating electricity from wind power, which would shield island residents from the volatility of world energy markets and enable them to mitigate costs by seasonally selling excess power back into the regional power grid, has proved to be a strong motivator in pursuing the projects.

"Wind blows [on the islands] all the time," he said recently. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to say, 'Gosh! Maybe we should consider wind power here.' It truly is a no-brainer."

Community ownership

Unlike other wind power projects in Maine, these projects would supply electricity directly to nearby residents instead of feeding all their power into the New England regional power grid. Rather than being owned by developers looking to tap into growing markets, the island wind turbine facilities essentially would be owned and operated by the communities in which they are located.

According to Philip Conkling, president of the Island Institute, community ownership is a key aspect of these projects. Owning the power that is generated and being able to sell excess power in the winter when demand on the islands is relatively low and the wind supply is high will help island residents in their efforts to keep island life affordable, he said recently.

Electric power is not the only increasing cost on the islands. The limited and usually scenic real estate on the islands is expensive, which results in elevated property taxes, and the high cost of boat fuel and maintenance affects prices of even the most basic supplies on the islands, groceries included.

By using natural resources such as wind wisely, Conkling said, the island communities can help make sure they remain attractive and affordable places to live, much as they were in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was wind, which early colonists depended upon for transportation, that brought permanent settlers to the islands in the first place, he said.

"Fundamentally, it's a sustainability issue," Conkling said. "Here's a resource that's been very valuable to the islands in the past -- a resource that hasn't been used for 100 years. [Reconnecting to that resource] is a very appealing idea."

Ed Schwabe, a retired U.S. Army colonel and board member for the Swan's Island Electric Cooperative, said recently that reducing power costs on Swan's Island could lead to economic benefits just as important as stable or even lower electric bills. He said small, ocean-oriented business such as sea-salt harvesting companies might decide to locate to the island if power were cheaper, which would help create local jobs.

"If we're going to have a sustainable, year-round population on the island, we've got to have affordable power," Schwabe said.

Economics

The main reason many of the island electric bills are so expensive is that the co-ops that serve residents on each island own and maintain the island's electrical distribution system. For island co-ops that buy power from mainland suppliers, this includes the expensive undersea power cable systems that connect the islands to mainland port communities miles away.

When residents on such an island pay electric bills, they also are paying maintenance costs on the island system and the debt service on loans the local co-op has incurred to purchase the necessary distribution equipment. This can add up to millions of dollars in debt that, in many cases, has to be paid down by only a few hundred co-op customers.

The high infrastructure costs and the limited number of people served by each system are reasons many islands established their own co-ops decades ago. Power companies didn't want to spend so much money to serve so few customers, leaving the islands with little choice but to acquire diesel generators and set up their own electrical distribution systems.