Five Maine communities have been selected for a federal program designed to support energy transitions in rural coastal and island communities.
Brooklin, Chebeague Island, Cranberry Isles, Passamaquoddy Tribe at the Pleasant Point Reservation and Washington County will get technical and planning assistance to make their energy systems more resilient.
Nick Battista is with the Island Institute, which works with communities and experts around the country as part of the program.
"When you get to the edges of the grid and you start talking about adding more renewable energy, or you start talking about how you manage the electrical demand on a small grid, you have variability across a whole bunch of different areas, and that makes it really challenging," Battista said.
He said these communities are often at the end of a long extension cord, making them more vulnerable to outages, and at a disadvantage as they try to incorporate renewable energy sources.
"These are communities that are on the edges of the electrical grid, or maybe they're on an isolated grid, they're islanded potentially, and they're communities that don't have a ton of capacity to tackle these challenges on their own," Battista said.
Eastport and Mount Desert Island were previously selected for the program, Battista said, and used it to explore ways to incorporate solar power and energy storage hubs.
