Green Mountain Power (GMP), based in Vermont, has unveiled a plan called the Zero Outages Initiative which will utilize microgrids, energy storage and hardening utility systems to build a more resilient energy infrastructure. The state was ravaged by severe weather over the past few years, which caused a lot of damage. In December 2022 a serious storm left 75,000 residents without power. Earlier this year in July floods washed roads and bridges away, causing significant problems for whole areas.
The objective of this plan is to ensure that all customers, whether they are city dwellers or those living in remote areas, experience zero power outages by 2030. Microgrids feature as a major component of this initiative. Other aspects include storm-hardening and under-grounding of power lines as well as the deployment of energy storage batteries.
How it will operate: the company will use circuit-level resiliency data, community vulnerability information from the Centers for Disease Control, topography and other data to create and implement resiliency plans for every one of the utility’s 300 circuits.
There will be two phases, the first developing rural areas of central and southern Vermont over the next two years. During this phase, the utility expects to invest $250 million in under-grounding and storm-hardening power lines and $30 million on energy storage projects, including microgrids and residential batteries for those living in remote locations.
Plans for the second phase, expected to launch in 2026, have not yet been made public, but GMP will be developing its concept, integrating emerging technologies like bidirectional charging, which allows homes to use electric vehicle batteries as a power source. This may well have lessons for other utilities which could face similar challenges in the future.