Northern New England’s hydro dams are struggling to generate power because of drought conditions.
Regional grid operator ISO-New England spokesperson Mary Kate Colapietro said environmental conditions can affect electricity production.
“That could be a variety of factors, from things like the weather, if there are, say, drought conditions that could perhaps impact what generators are making decisions on,” Colapietro said.
But there might be other reasons dam owners also could be holding back from bidding to sell energy into the grid, Colapietro added.
Average daily hydropower generation went from more than 23,000 megawatt hours in June to about half that in August, according to ISO-New England records.
A flash drought set into northern New England this summer, and most of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were in moderate to severe drought in the second week of September, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Nick Hollister, operations manager at FirstLight, a clean energy company that owns hydropower dams in Massachusetts and Connecticut, said most conventional dams generate power from natural river flows. When river levels are low, that means electricity generation suffers, Hollister added.
“And as a result other forms of power have to pick up the load,” Hollister said. “In New England the first and most prevalent option for where that power comes from is natural gas.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
