Newcastle Solar Battery Storage & Lending Program

To the right of the Newcastle Town Office’s entrance stands a metal shelf with boxy black bags. Inside are lithium-ion batteries, complete with every variety of charging cable imaginable. The batteries are part of a program for Newcastle residents to borrow as a back-up electricity source in case storms knock out the power, as they have many times before.

The town office isn’t the only place with these portable batteries; the community room of the Clayton V. Huntley Jr. Fire Station has two shelving units worth. The batteries are charged by the solar panels on the building’s roof, another recent addition to the town’s energy landscape.

They aren’t the only batteries in the fire station, either. In the basement, rack-mounted lithium-ion batteries hooked up to a solar inverter keep the station running even if the town loses power.

All these batteries are part of a new system funded through a Community Resilience Partnership (CRP) Community Action Grant that aims to make Newcastle more energy efficient and resilient.

Identifying Newcastle’s clean energy need

To qualify for CRP opportunities, towns must go through an enrollment process, which includes community workshops to discuss resilience priorities. When Newcastle enrolled in the CRP in July 2024, workshop participants prioritized reducing the town's carbon footprint through clean energy. The fire station was the perfect site for solar panels because of the position of its roof and its role as a community warming and cooling center, which would be needed in outages.

Energy savings were identified as important, too. Town Manager Kevin Sutherland said that after a few years, the solar panels will save Newcastle residents an estimated $11,000 a year even before considering electricity rate increases. The panels also provide enough energy to the grid to offset the cost of powering the nearby Town Office and Sheepscot Fire Station through net metering.

Newcastle wanted to take their resilience building efforts one step further. The winter storms of 2024 caused many residents to lose power. Batteries would store electricity to power fire station operations during extended outages.

But what about the town’s most vulnerable residents, who may need electricity for life saving tools like refrigerating insulin or running oxygen machines?

Working with the Lincoln County Planning Commission and looking at programs in other towns across the country, Sutherland decided that portable lithium-ion batteries, charged through the fire station’s solar panels, would meet Newcastle’s needs.

Creative funding for small town solar

To fund the ambitious project, Newcastle had to get creative. The Select Board agreed to purchase the solar panels using the town’s funds to take advantage of federal elective tax credits before they expired.  

“Community support is important,” Sutherland said. “We were committed to doing some of the project with our savings because we know in the long term it will save us money.”

Then, Newcastle applied for a Round 5 CRP Community Action Grant for the battery system with the idea that once the funds became available, the solar panels and its infrastructure would be ready for batteries.

Sutherland said that towns installing new solar panels on municipal buildings should contact their electric provider (in Newcastle’s case, Central Maine Power) as early as possible and communicate frequently about the limitations of existing infrastructure and necessary upgrades.

After working out the details of the system, the next step was to find a contractor. Sutherland hired Rob Nelson, owner of Electric Sunshine. As a Newcastle resident, the project was important to him.

“I can look out my window and see the installation. I wanted to make sure I gave the town a good price because I wanted to see it done right,” Nelson laughed.

Newcastle’s project went live in June 2025 and connected to the grid in September 2026.

Battery power: beta testing and beyond

Newcastle received their Community Action Grant funds later in 2025. They used the grant to purchase the rack-mounted batteries and 27 portable units.

But before they launched the battery lending program, they needed to test it. Sutherland found a willing volunteer in Mike Titus, a Newcastle planning board member. Titus lives in an isolated part of town that more frequently loses power due to trees falling on power lines and car crashes on Route 1 knocking down utility poles.

But Titus doesn’t have a generator, and neither do some of his neighbors. Sutherland worries about houses like Titus’ which, in addition to losing power, could be blocked from services by fallen trees and are not utility companies’ priorities during storms.

Sutherland enlisted Titus to test the batteries in December 2025 during multiple power outages. Titus was able to keep his refrigerator running and his lights on for days. He wrote a thorough report for Sutherland with one main conclusion: the batteries work.

“I am already very pleased that this program is in place from my excellent results observed through this preliminary testing,” Titus said. “Not everyone has a generator, and even if you do have one, they allow you greater flexibility.”

Launching the battery lending program

In April 2026, Newcastle officially launched the battery lending program. Residents sign a waiver and participate in a short training, after which they can borrow a battery for the duration of an outage.

Sutherland presented about the program at CRP’s 2026 Stronger Communities Summit. He brought a battery for conference-goers to charge their phones and laptops. The week before, he used a battery to power staff’s laptops for a long work night during Maine’s primary election.

As of July 2026, the battery lending program had over a dozen sign-ups, and continues to grow as the word spreads. For now, Sutherland's main goal is to prepare all Newcastle residents for the next storm event.

“How do you build resiliency? You think about contingency plans,” Sutherland said. “We've built resiliency.”