Page 9 - BusinessWest May 12, 2021

Jim Lavelle at HG&E’s energy- storage system, the second such system to be installed in the state.
Falls Dam facility, which has been power- ing businesses for more than 150 years, Lavelle talked at length about what else goes on there.
Indeed, this is the site of the Robert
E. Barrett Fishway, and the fishlift there helps migrating fish over the dam. In
a normal spring, the facility would be visited by dozens of school classes on field trips — and other visitors — who can watch American shad, sea lamprey, sturgeon, and (hopefully) a few Atlantic salmon make their way through the lift and over the dam to resume their jour- ney north. This is not a normal spring, however, and the fishway is closed due to COVID-19.
The work of ferrying fish over the dam continues, however, as does the work of producing electricity at the twin turbines, production that, as noted, is just one of the reasons HG&E finds itself among those utilities identified by SEPA as tak- ing the lead in transforming to a carbon- free energy system.
As it went about completing its report on the state of clean-energy transforma- tion and identifying utilities now on its leaderboard, SEPA listed what it calls the “four dimensions of utility transforma- tion” — clean-energy resources, corpo-
rate leadership, modern grid enablement, and allied actions and engagement.
As he talked about his utilities efforts, Lavelle touched on all these elements, starting with those clean-energy resources.
HG&E now has many of them, he said, list-
ing the dam, the Mount Tom Solar and Energy Storage System, and others, which, together, cre- ate a diverse, increasingly clean power-supply portfolio.
“
and that power has to come from carbon-free sources, that will be
a real challenge. Different camps think offshore wind will fill in a lot of the gaps, but if we’re going to see a tripling of load, every other utility is going to see a tripling
of load, so there will be a huge demand.
If we see a tripling of our load,
”
transformation, what it means for a city looking to make history of a different kind, and what the road to hitting the state’s benchmarks might look like.
Scaling Up
As he gave BusinessWest a tour of the Hadley
Beyond this portfolio is a mindset to embrace clean energy, efficiency, conservation, and plan- ning for tomorrow, a mindset that has existed for many years now, long before the state started set- ting net-zero goals.
“We have a ‘green team’ here that does a lot of our advanced planning on carbon-foot- print management, but we also have everyone
HG&E
Continued on page 91
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FEATURE
MAY 12, 2021 9
BusinessWest