Massachusetts towns win grant for locally owned clean energy resilience

Ayer, Harvard and Shirley won a Massachusetts grant to study a town-owned clean energy and battery storage system for critical facilities. The NextGen Energy partnership aims to cut energy costs, keep emergency sites powered and create a model other communities can copy.

Why it matters: - Massachusetts communities are facing high energy costs and more frequent extreme weather. - The project is designed to keep critical facilities powered during outages while helping towns lower municipal bills. - The model could give other Massachusetts towns a path to community-owned clean energy and new municipal revenue.

What happened: - The towns of Ayer, Harvard and Shirley received a Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action Grant through the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ new Environment & Climate One Stop program. - The towns are partnering with NextGen Energy to launch Keep Lights On Massachusetts, a public-private effort focused on critical infrastructure. - The initiative aims to bring locally owned clean energy and storage to facilities communities rely on most.

The details: - The grant will fund a comprehensive study to identify ideal sites for clean energy generation and battery storage in each town. - The study will assess environmental factors and determine the sizing needed to power critical infrastructure sites. - NextGen Energy says its Hubs for Energy Resilient Operations, or HERO, combine on-site clean generation, battery storage and an intelligent management system. - The company says the system lets towns generate, store and manage their own electricity, stay powered during emergencies and earn new revenue. - Keep Lights On Massachusetts is positioned as a replicable model that could expand statewide. - The initiative’s website is keeplightsonma.org. - NextGen Energy says its community energy infrastructure approach pairs dispatchable, carbon-free generation with energy storage and a software-driven management platform. - The company says the HERO Hub system uses AI and geospatial analysis to size, prioritize and optimize energy resources across a network of sites. - NextGen Energy says that setup can operate as a virtual power plant for a town or cluster of towns. - More information is available from NextGen Energy. - The company’s LinkedIn page is here.

Between the lines: - Shirley’s select board chair said the project could significantly reduce municipal energy costs without sacrificing reliability. - Harvard’s select board chair pointed to the town’s Green Community designation in 2010 and later Climate Leader certification as a fit with the initiative. - Ayer’s select board vice-chair said the grant helps bring residents into the effort and reflects the state MVP program’s goal of turning climate risk into local action. - The towns are framing the project as both a resilience strategy and a community ownership play, not just an energy upgrade.

What's next: - The three towns will move ahead with the siting and sizing study for HERO systems. - The study results will help determine where clean generation and storage should be built in each community. - Keep Lights On Massachusetts will seek to use the initial project as a template for other municipalities, universities, ports and institutions across the Commonwealth. - NextGen Energy says it will provide the technology, financing structure and implementation expertise needed to make town-owned energy systems work.

The bottom line: - Ayer, Harvard and Shirley are using a state resilience grant to test a locally owned clean power model that could keep essential services running and reduce energy costs at the same time.