Eastport, Maine Is The Ideal Place For Solar, Tidal Power, And A Microgrid – CleanTechnica

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When the sun rises on America each day, it hits Eastport, Maine — the easternmost point of the continental US — first. Eastport is a small community of 1300 hardy people who live on an island on the edge of the Bay of Fundy. If you are looking to be in the lobster business or to sail the waters between Maine and Nova Scotia, it’s the ideal spot, but it lacks a reliable supply of electricity when powerful storms rake the coast of Maine. Eastport is at the end of a 40-mile-long transmission line. When the power goes out, it stays out until repairs are completed. The only backup power supply is from a microgrid that harnesses solar and tidal power and battery storage.

Making Eastport energy resilient has put it at the forefront of Maine’s renewable energy transition and made it a leader in energy independence work for remote communities in the state and beyond. In 2021, the city was awarded an Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project grant from the Department of Energy, which funded work to develop localized energy generation and storage. Now, a community initiative is developing solar and tidal power to feed a microgrid that will allow the city to withstand interruptions in grid power without resorting to the use of a diesel generator.

“This very small city on the very eastern edge of the United States is developing what would be a world-class energy facility,” Nick Battista, the chief policy officer at the Island Institute, a Maine-based nonprofit that assisted Eastport in applying for the grant and is working to continue its implementation, told Canary Media. In September, Eastport received $200,000 in its second round of funding through the DOE’s Energizing Rural Communities Prize.

Transferring Microgrid Technology To Other Island Communities

The fact that Eastport is at the end of a transmission line makes it the perfect contender for a microgrid, said Judy Long, the communications director of Versant Power, which operates the transmission line. Electricity generated on the island will feed into a battery array, which will then power the microgrid. It will remain connected to the regular electrical grid under normal conditions, but when a storm knocks out grid power, the microgrid will ​provide electricity to to city residents for up to four hours. Most outages are repaired in less time than that.

Five other Maine island communities received the same grant to begin their own electrification and resilience projects. Maine has 15 unbridged coastal islands with year-round inhabitants where people draw energy from individual generators, larger community generators, or through long cables connected to the mainland. Some of these island towns, like Isle au Haut and Islesboro, have already been working alongside Eastport to design similar resilience projects adapted to their individual needs. This summer, the International Energy Agency released a report describing how islands’ investment in ​“distributed energy sources” — which rely on microgrids and battery storage — play an important role in global decarbonization while bolstering island resilience and affordability.

Making a microgrid successful requires several technologies to work together in harmony. Solar and tidal help replenish the battery, and all of those pieces must coordinate with the grid. In January 2025, Eastport Community Solar’s 1 MW solar array will go online to supplement an existing 1.8 MW of distributed solar already operating on the island. But solar alone will not meet all the energy needs of the city. That’s where tidal power will come in. The current near the island can reach speeds of up to 3.5 meters per second — nearly 8 miles per hour. There is a small ferry that shuttles between Deer Island, Canada, and Eastport. It you stand at the southern tip of Deer Island, Eastport is to the west, but when the ferry departs the dock in Canada, it heads far to the east to insert itself into that fast flowing currently, which soon brings it safely to Eastport. It’s a ballet on water that plays out several times a day and it is a delight to watch.

“This site off of Eastport is one of the best sites in the country for tidal power,” said Stuart Davies, the CEO of the Ocean Renewable Power Company, which develops tidal and river power turbines. His company plans to submerge an up to 2 MW tidal power generator with long circular blades like those of a push mower in the waters of Eastport’s Western Passage by 2030. ORPC expects its installations in and around Eastport to serve as proof of concept examples of the merits of  tidal power. “Tidal energy is kind of in the forgotten asset class relative to wind and solar over the last decade,” Davies said. He expects that the technology will finally see broader commercialization in the next 5 to 10 years. Having a place where the water flows at up to 8 mph helps — a lot.

Sharon Klein, a University of Maine economics professor who specializes in community energy projects, cautions that the  success of the microgrid on Eastport depends on certain factors, such as how well it balances different energy loads across the day and how it integrates battery storage with the input from renewables and the existing electrical grid. “I do feel hopeful for Eastport, but I do think it is still feeling pretty experimental,” Klein said.

Eastport has applied for additional grants to fund the next stages of the microgrid project. Whether those additional funds are approved will depend largely on the attitudes toward renewable energy and resiliency projects held by the incoming administration. In the meantime, the community and the city’s energy committee are helping Eastport homes use less energy to begin with. More than 67 percent of the island’s homes were built in the early 1900s, so the committee has secured grant funding that helps residents identify where their homes are leaking heat and need improved insulation. They have collaborated with the local nonprofit WindowDressers to cover the cost of installing windows with higher insulating power.

“In my mind, all the energy things are interconnected — renewable energy, energy efficiency and the microgrid,” Klein said. ​“A microgrid is really great for a community because if there are power outages, a microgrid can help them not lose power to those critical loads while the rest of the grid is down. It’s even better if that microgrid can be powered by renewable energy, and you’re going to need less energy to begin with, if you’re more energy efficient.”

As someone who works with other community energy resilience projects, Klein thinks the biggest lesson from Eastport’s endeavor into building a microgrid is simply the work of navigating the bureaucratic process of applying for grants, laying out a plan, and working with the community to build support for the work ahead. ​“There’s definitely lessons that will be able to be transferable from community to community. Even just the starting point of getting to understand the grid and your needs, that stuff can transfer.”

A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step, according to a Chinese proverb, but it helps if that step is in the right direction. What Eastport is doing will help other island communities — both in Maine and elsewhere — to create microgrids of their own.