Just this past week, Puerto Rico suffered another setback in its effort to restore power to the island. One of its 400 megawatt power plants caught fire, plunging people back into the darkness.
Contributing to the growing list of major milestones for the U.S. offshore wind sector, this week the Governors from both New York and New Jersey announced commitments to launch the nation’s largest offshore wind solicitations. These commitments confirm the strong business case for offshore wind.
Extreme weather and related power outages come with a price tag, but these costs are not typically accounted for when considering the potential benefits of a resilient power system. The result is that fewer solar+storage systems pencil-out to make economic sense than would be the case if the power resilience they provide was accurately valued.
2017 was a banner year for offshore wind in the U.S. Boosted by the start of commercial operations at the Block Island Wind Farm in December 2016, the offshore wind sector gathered momentum and made significant progress over the year.
Any investigation into the massive power outage at Atlanta’s international airport last month should not only look back to see what went wrong. Rather, it should look forward to how the airport could use new technologies like solar and battery storage to prevent such disasters from happening again.
Last week, the Baker-Polito Administration awarded $20 million in grants to support 26 energy storage projects in 25 Massachusetts communities. This grant program puts the state clearly in the storage leadership role in the East.
When natural disasters strike, people suffer, and the worst hit are invariably the most vulnerable among us – the elderly, the disabled, and the economically and socially disadvantaged.
Funding from the Kresge Foundation will enable Empowered by Light to deploy resilient power and water systems on at least three fire stations in Puerto Rico. The resulting clean energy and water will have significant public health and safety benefits for the communities surrounding these stations.
Disasters often lead to unexpected and swift technology innovation. The calamitous collapse of Puerto Rico’s electricity system might be the next example of that phenomenon.
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation announced in July that the Connecticut Green Bank had won this year’s Innovations in American Government Award.
