Electricity customers on Matinicus Island say, “We’re not off the grid, we are the grid.”
The ratepayers, and the diesel generators, on Matinicus Island, are among the few Mainers who are not part of the New England power grid system by which most electricity users and generators are interconnected.
The Matinicus power company (its legal name bears the odd grammar of “Matinicus Plantation Electrical Company”) is the municipal utility providing electricity to the year-round homes, summer cottages, fish-houses, and wharves on Matinicus Island. There is no cable to the mainland, and no legal or financial relationship with any agency except the “town” of Matinicus.
It is also, despite a common misconception, not a co-op, and certainly not the sort of informal provider that some visitors seem to think (“…can’t you people just do whatever you want out there?”) Matinicus Plantation Electrical Company (MPE) is subject to the rules of the Public Utilities Commission, and cannot take actions which conflict with these standards any more than CMP or Bangor Hydro can.
Permit me, for the remainder of this article, to refer to MPE as “we,” rather than as “they” or “it.” There is a reason for that. Although MPE follows the regulations set for all utilities, when trouble strikes, we operate like islanders…we have to fix it ourselves.
As the wind howls, as it does all winter, and the ice accumulates on the branches, and the over-mature spruce trees fall, the potential exists for a power outage. Off-island friends often assume that we must struggle with outages all the time. In reality, we seem to have fewer, shorter disruptions than many mainland customers. Why? For one thing, with only a few miles of overhead wire, it is usually easy to find whatever caused the problem. Also, the line crew is almost always handy.
When power is interrupted on Matinicus, a few things happen right away. If the problem affects the generators, an alarm system from the powerhouse telephones and pages the station operator or, should he be off-island, his designated substitute. Islanders who have old-fashioned telephones (which work independent of household current) call the station operator at home to report an outage, knowing that sometimes only their section of line might be impacted. If the lights go out on a stormy day, the sound of trucks can be heard all over the island, as men with chainsaws muster to go out and help.
Before anybody starts up a saw, though, they go find the station operator. As should be obvious, nobody can clear the mess until the power is off to at least that that section of the island.
Our power company has but two employees, both part-time. Bill does the bookkeeping and billing, and Paul does everything except paperwork. As the lineman, station operator and repairman, meter-reader, parts department, on-call trouble man, and “institutional memory,” he treats the island’s electrical system almost like his extra child. It takes priority over all other work, he never leaves the island without someone standing by for him, and he keeps a close eye on everything, aware of what may need repair or replacement and doing routine maintenance on a careful schedule. (Major repairs to the diesel engines are handled by Billings Diesel, and all decisions are made by the Board of Assessors.)
Sometimes, it is faster and safer to shut the whole island down, clear up anything which seems threatening, and start up again. This was the case in December, when a large tree fell in a storm, landing on the wires and catching fire.
Somebody heard the tree “snap” and saw what happened; he drove (or ran) immediately to our house to sound the alert. That alone might demonstrate a big difference between our system and how a larger utility works. As he hurried out the door, Paul (who is my husband) said, “We may just shut the whole thing down.”
Thankfully, there was no forest fire, and if anything, the number of people who arrived to help almost required crowd control. Islanders used the opportunity to also clear trees in other places which looked like they might yet go down in the storm. Doing so prevented anybody being called out later that night, well worth a short interruption during the dim winter daylight. As it happened, a Caterpillar excavator was on Matinicus for another job. They put that machine to work pushing leaning spruces away from power lines, which no doubt saved the men a good deal of time. As much roadside trimming as we do, there always seems to be one more tree to worry about.
In that December storm, I called an elderly couple on the other side of the island, who are always the first to phone when they lose their electricity (in fact, they often beat the power company’s own alarm system.) “The lights may go out for a bit. It’s all right. They know what’s going on and the guys are working on it.”
When there is any problem, all sorts of people go to work on behalf of the power company, whether it be removing trees, manning the phones, or as was the case once last year, climbing up to pull a dead seagull out of the wires (power off, of course.)
The next day, the older folks called to thank me for the “heads up.” You don’t always get that service from a big utility.
Our power plant operator doesn’t sleep well in a gale, and that’s a lot of the winter. As the trouble man, it’s his phone that will ring first if anything happens. Still, that means that it never takes long to get somebody on the job. Assuming the weather allows for safe working conditions (because sometimes there’s little that can be done until the wind subsides, or at least until daylight comes,) “we’ll” have the power back on very soon.
Understanding that this may bring up more questions than it answers, I will offer additional articles about our power company from time to time. These may describe our generating system, relate a bit of its unusual history and discuss hopes for the future, including possible alternative energy projects.