Gigantic Batteries Help Grow Renewable Energy In Maine, New England

NextEra site manager Ben Pierce and project manger Jeff Plew at the company’s new “grid-scale” battery array on Cousins Island in Maine’s Casco Bay.
Photo by Fred Bever for Maine Public

For more than half a century, a massive, oil-fired plant has been churning out electricity from an island in the heart of Maine’s Casco Bay, where sailors use its towering smokestack for navigation.

The old generator is expensive to run and dirtier than new technologies, so these days it comes on only a few times a year. Nonetheless, since December, the wires on the island have been humming pretty much nonstop.

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