BRATTLEBORO — Windham Regional Commission (WRC) is set to receive funding through Congressionally directed spending supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders to help towns in southeast Vermont plan Resiliency Zones.
This innovative work to increase resiliency in the face of climate change is a collaboration between WRC and Green Mountain Power (GMP).
According to a news release, Resiliency Zones are a part of GMP's proactive climate plan “to work directly with partner communities to strengthen the grid, help prevent outages, and bounce back more quickly when severe weather hits.” An example of this is the cutting-edge microgrid in Panton that GMP pioneered in 2021.
Seven of the 15 towns identified by GMP as high-priority locations for Resiliency Zones (Grafton, Athens, Brookline, Rockingham, Brattleboro, Townshend, and Putney) are in the Windham region, making WRC an ideal planning partner for this program.
The WRC will receive $151,000 to design and develop these Resiliency Zones.
“With these funds, we will support town engagement [...] as local input on what the communities need will be essential,” said WRC executive director Chris Campany. “We have seen what severe weather can do to communities in our region. Resiliency Zones will support a stronger grid with faster restoration and a more connected community when climate change-driven storms cause outages.”
Campany added that the project “will also help our communities transition faster from fossil fuels to clean electricity, especially for our top sources of carbon pollution, driving, and heating.”
According to GMP, Resiliency Zones prevent outages by “leveraging renewable generation, battery storage, communications, and other innovations. In the event of storm damage or a prolonged grid outage, Resiliency Zones can enable backup power from batteries and renewable energy to flow to a community hub or a network of customers. This creates backup power that can work independently from the larger electric system when needed.”
GMP plans to grow the Resiliency Zone program, expanding in the future to serve towns across the state.
“We know that the effects of climate change are already here and impacting our communities. This is a great opportunity for us to work with towns to design resilient systems based on their needs,” said Josh Castonguay, vice president and chief innovation officer at GMP. “We look forward to working with WRC to turn this grant into action.”