Isle au Haut Electric Power Company

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Isle au Haut Electric Power Company

Since 1983, the island has received its power by a 7-mile undersea cable from Stonington. The whole community pitched in to replace the WWII-era diesel generator that had been powering the island since the 1970’s. Island residents literally walked along the floor of the ocean laying the cable out of harm’s way. The cable was expected to have a lifetime of 15-20 years; it is now 36 years old. This careful attention to detail, along with a bit of luck, has allowed the cable to survive without any failures.

We know we can’t depend on good luck forever. So the community is currently taking steps to prepare for the eventual failure of the cable. The Power Company plans to construct a 300kW solar array with 1,000kWh of supercapacitor (battery) storage, which will make the island's electricity nearly 100% renewable and independent of the mainland grid. In addition, by adding thermal storage in the form of heat pumps located in homes and public buildings, the community will be able to take advantage of excess power in times of high solar production and low demand. This will allow us to replace costly heating oil (kerosene and propane) with electric heat and save tons of CO2 emissions; we’ll reduce the heating bills of people using heat with storage and keep a lot of income that is currently being spent on fossil fuels on island.

At this time (June 2019) we are wrapping up the final engineering on the project, hope to have financing in place soon after and expect construction this fall. A large part of this schedule is out of our hands, so the timing may change.

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