MAINE MONITOR • January 12, 2025
Nearly two years after the Legislature began debating whether storing energy — in batteries, or reservoirs, or fuel cells — should be considered generation or distribution and whether utility companies should be allowed to have an ownership stake in it, the question remains unresolved. Utility companies (CMP and Versant) used to own both the means to generate electricity (like hydroelectric, coal, nuclear and natural gas plants) and the poles and wires that brought that electricity to homes and businesses. That changed in the 1990s, when the legislature forced companies to sell their generating assets and forbade them from acquiring new ones, separating the “generation” of electricity from its “transmission and distribution.” Both CMP and Versant have argued that energy storage should not be considered generation, and that they should therefore be able to own and control such projects.