"Integrating time-tested technology with emerging innovations, remote Isle au Haut could be a renewable energy model for the rest of the world."

"Living on an island forces one to be an innovator in ways large and small. For the 50 or so year-round residents of Isle au Haut, an island off the coast of Maine, innovation can look like using PVC pipe as a curtain rod because there are no real curtain rods at hand — or it can look like the future of the nation’s electrical grid.

The 6-mile-long by 2-mile-wide (10-kilometer-long by 3-kilometer-wide) island has been facing disruption of its electricity supply. So the islanders, as they do every day, got creative — and in the process integrated technology that’s been available for decades with emerging innovations to create what could be a renewable energy model for the rest of the U.S. and perhaps the world.

Isle au Haut gets electricity via underwater cable from the mainland, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) away. But that cable, painstakingly installed along the ocean floor by a local lobsterman in 1983, has surpassed its estimated lifespan by almost double and could fail at any time."

Stephanie Bouchard reports for Ensia March 10, 2020. [2]