The testing ground for the program was the western Vermont town of Panton, a rural community of about 700 residents on Lake Champlain. The utility will do three or four projects a year to start, “but we will eventually accelerate that schedule given the pace of climate change,” said Kristin Carlson, vice president for strategy and external relations. The project is part of Green Mountain Power’s new “ resiliency zone” initiative, aimed at making the electric grid more durable in some of the state’s most vulnerable communities. Sign up for free to get the latest delivered straight to your inbox. So for residents in more rural locations who are also without power, “there will be access to food and some electricity there.” Get connectedĮvery morning, thousands of energy professionals turn to our newsletters for the day’s most important news. “When the village has an interruption, the system will act like an emergency generator,” Gephart said. With that in mind, the local utility, Green Mountain Power, is building a microgrid that will power the central village during outages. Such extremes promise to get worse in the face of climate change, especially for a town that, because of its valley location, is especially prone to “significant weather,” Gephart said. “And somebody had to round up a pump and generator, cordon off the gas station and pump people their 5- or 10-gallon allotment.” “People had to queue up in front of the grocery store and be escorted in with flashlights,” recalled Jeffrey Gephart, the town’s energy coordinator. The town’s 1,000-or-so residents, stuck on what had essentially become an island, had no power, internet or phone service. Tucked between the two main ranges of the Green Mountains, Rochester was cut off in every direction for days after flood waters destroyed access roads and other infrastructure. And few communities fared worse than the remote mountain town of Rochester. Tropical Storm Irene caused widespread devastation when it roared into Vermont in the summer of 2011.
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