It took significant arm-twisting by the state in 2012 to get NStar to agree to buy the expensive power the now-defunct Cape Wind project would have produced. The Patrick administration conditioned the merger of the state's largest electric power company with Northeast Utilities on signing a 15-year contract to buy a quarter of the electricity the nation's first offshore wind farm would generate - even though the 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour price tag was nearly double that of electricity produced by conventional fossil fuels and came with a mandated 3.5 percent annual increase. It was the only way to make Cape Wind viable, and was a deal roundly booed by wind farm critics.
Fast forward five years and the renewable energy landscape has changed so dramatically that Eversource (NStar's new name, post-merger) embraced wind power on its own earlier this month, entering into a 50/50 partnership with the Danish offshore wind power giant DONG Energy to build a wind farm 15 miles south of Martha's Vineyard.
http://www.ack.net/news/20161225/changing-landscape-for-renewable-energy
