Climate Change and the Electric Grid

Maine has witnessed the impacts of climate change and has made great efforts to encourage use of heat pumps, electric vehicles, and hot water heaters. These critical elements for mitigating Climate Change will replace fossil fuel energy sources with electric energy as much as possible.

The certain consequence, though, is an eventual three-fold increase in electric power demand. This will require a transformation of the 140 year old U.S. electric grid, both in capacity and the ability to include renewable sources like solar.

We will explore the present grid, and the challenges ahead in order to transform it.

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Instructor: Gerald (Jerry) Brand

Jerry is an Electronic Product Design Engineer, with 40 years of experience in Instrumentation, Communications, and Power Conversion. Understanding of the electric utility is a necessary part of those product designs. He taught electronics at the college level. He has been a member of the City of Belfast Climate Committee (now Climate, Energy & Utilities Committee / CEUC) for over 4 years.