UPDATE: See the bottom for Consumer Advocate Don Kreis’ explanation of why his office opposed this plan.

How about some depressing news not related to COVID? An intriguing proposal to use 7.1 megawatt lithium-ion battery storage and some demand control to improve reliability in a small New Hampshire town served by a single power line (I wrote about it here) has been shelved.

Eversource says the Public Utilities Commission wanted to expand the project beyond what they wanted, according to this Keene Sentinel story.

Lets hope they figure this out, because this is exactly the sort of thing that we need a lot more of to maintain power reliability without accelerating our climate demise.

UPDATE:

Don Kreis, the state consumer advocate, pointed out in a twitter exchange with me that his office and the PUC supported a different wires alternative: Liberty Utility’s plan to use distributed batteries in Hanover to balance load and replace traditional upgrades. The problem with the Eversource plan, he wrote, was mostly financial: They wanted to “rate base” it, or make all ratepayers cover all the costs. Here’s part of his exchange:

He also points out that Eversource can still build the project if they want to experiment – they just can’t get a guaranteed rate-of-return.

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