Islands, Airports, and Arctic Heat: Energy Solutions for Every Community

In this episode, explore three ways NREL researchers are creating energy solutions for small, remote, and rural regions:

• How a microgrid project on Martha’s Vineyard is strengthening the island’s energy resilience and reliability during outages
• How NREL’s ARIES platform is being used to test new electrification scenarios for airports—before infrastructure is built
• How geothermal heat stored underground could help meet building heating needs in Alaska’s Arctic climate

This episode was hosted by Kerrin Jeromin and Taylor Mankle, written and produced by Allison Montroy, Hannah Halusker, and Kaitlyn Stottler, and edited by Taylor Mankle, Joe DelNero, and Brittany Falch. Graphics are by Brittnee Gayet. Our title music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino of Drift BC. Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast is created by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Email us at podcast@nrel.gov. Follow NREL on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and Facebook.

Transcript

[intro music, fades]  

Kerrin: Welcome to The NREL Podcast, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for energy systems research, development, and integration. We’re highlighting the latest in research and innovations happening at the lab. It’s Wednesday, July 23. I’m Kerrin Jeromin. 

Taylor: And I’m Taylor Mankle. Today’s episode takes us through advanced energy solutions for remote, small, or rural communities across the country. 

Kerrin: Our first stop is in nautical New England, where local planners in Edgartown, Massachusetts—on the island of Martha’s Vineyard—are doing more than just fishing for lobster. Members of the Edgartown Energy Committee are planning for a microgrid to keep municipal buildings powered during outages, serving a population that jumps from 5,000 to 25,000 people in summer. 

Taylor: Then we’ll travel south—to regional airports in Virginia and Connecticut—where a partnership between NREL and NASA aims to evaluate the feasibility of using airports as energy nodes: developing on-site power systems that not only meet airport energy and charging needs but also generate electricity for local regions. 

Kerrin: And we end our tour in the far, frozen west—Fairbanks, Alaska— where new NREL modeling shows how underground thermal storage can help meet heating demands in extremely cold climates. Researchers found that waste heat from a nearby coal plant could be captured in summer, stored using borehole thermal energy storage, and then used in winter to warm buildings via geothermal heat pumps. 

Taylor: From coast-to-coast, let’s get going! 

[music] 

Kerrin: Alright Taylor, you know this, but our listeners do not. I’ve recently moved to New England, moved back east, where my family is. So, as a current New Englander, I can tell you that summers sure do draw a crowd to the coastline. Boating, beaches, seafood, sunshine—what could be better? 

Taylor:  It really is a special place during the summer and you’re right, the people come from everywhere to partake. 

Kerrin: All that summer charm has a flip side though—especially for year-round residents. 

Taylor: With no bridge to the mainland, Edgartown, MA relies on ferries and planes to get people and supplies in and out. It's a charming spot, but not exactly convenient when the power goes out. 

Kerrin: And that’s not just a tourist-season issue. After the summer crowds leave, fall and winter pose risks of hurricanes and nor’easters, and the risk of outages with them. 

Taylor: But the Edgartown Energy Committee is working on a solution: a microgrid that would keep key town buildings powered during emergencies, providing independent, resilient energy sources to weather such storms. 

Kerrin: In a microgrid system, the buildings can be powered by a variety of energy sources, like solar photovoltaics, battery energy storage, grid power, or a backup generator. The microgrid normally selects the cheapest energy source, but when grid power goes out, it operates independently using the remaining energy sources. 

Taylor: The committee is aiming to provide up to seven days of backup power with their microgrid. That would cover essential facilities like the Highway Department and its campus, even if help from the mainland is delayed. 

Kerrin: To figure out if it’s doable and worth the investment, Edgartown applied for technical assistance through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy to Communities program, also known as E2C. 

Taylor: That connected them with NREL and other national lab experts, including Amanda Krelling from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She started by collecting detailed buildings data, from utility bills, to building materials, satellite imagery, and—get this—even roof color. 

Kerrin: Yeah, roof color, that matters here. Krelling says light-colored roofs reflect more sunlight and help keep buildings cooler, while dark-colored roofs absorb more heat, impacting a building’s energy use. 

Taylor: Krelling and the E2C Expert Match Team used that data to model different microgrid setups using the Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model, or DER-CAM. It allowed them to optimize microgrid setups by comparing energy loads across four different generation strategies.  

Kerrin: Okay, Strategy 1 and the most basic option was a microgrid with just solar panels and no batteries. The most advanced strategy included nearly 430 kilowatts of solar and enough battery storage to cover the Highway Department campus and even sell excess power back to the grid. 

Taylor:  This wouldn’t just make Edgartown’s power supply more resilient—it could also lower operating costs and even generate revenue. 

Kerin: The Expert Match team didn’t just hand over numbers. They helped Edgartown understand what kind of system would actually make sense for their location and needs. 

Taylor: That groundwork paid off. Edgartown used the analysis in a grant application—and landed over $30,000 from the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program to advance to a microgrid engineering study. 

Kerrin: And they’re already thinking about the future: The energy generation projected in these strategies could allow for added features down the road, like EV charging and heat pump heating, without reducing the microgrid’s output or changing its load. 

Taylor: The Edgartown energy committee hopes that the lessons learned from this project will go on to benefit the five other towns of Martha's Vineyard. 

Kerrin: The lesson here? Even small communities can take big steps toward resilient, locally powered energy systems—especially with the right data and expertise. 

Taylor: And programs like E2C are helping make that possible. If you’re part of a community group, utility, or local government, it might be worth looking into— check out the link in our episode description. 

[music] 

Kerrin: Okay, we’ve wrapped up our island tour. Although I love islands—I’d like to stay there forever—it’s time to board our next stop: the rapidly rising world of aviation energy demand. 

Taylor: Yes, while towns like Edgartown plan for local energy resilience, airports are gearing up for a surge in electricity demand. 

Kerrin: Between fleets of rental vehicles and ground support equipment, electricity demand at U.S. airports might quintuple in the next 20 years. 

Taylor: Smaller regional and general aviation airports are part of that surge in demand, and most of them weren’t exactly built with five times the electric infrastructure in mind. 

Kerrin: Right. These airports often rely on simple rural connections, so meeting that kind of power demand means big investments in new generation, power lines, and substations. 

Taylor: And for airports working with tight budget, that’s a huge challenge. But researchers at NREL say there may be a better way to meet that demand: generate more power on-site. 

Kerrin: Mhm, and that could mean using solar panels, batteries, or other distributed energy resources to offset utility costs and provide backup power. In some cases, they could even sell electricity back to the grid. 

Taylor: And with many small airports sitting on large open land, there’s real potential for these on-site systems to do double duty: help the airport and the region stay powered. 

Kerrin: That’s the idea behind a project called ÆNodes, short for Airports as Energy Nodes. NREL is teaming up with NASA and a couple of partner airports to explore what it would take for airports to become energy hubs. 

Taylor: They’re starting with two case studies: Winchester Regional Airport in Virginia and Tweed New Haven Airport in Connecticut, both of which are expanding their services to include electrified aircraft. The team is using detailed modeling to understand each airport’s current electric system, projected growth, and how on-site generation might help. 

Kerrin: And to do that, they’re using NREL’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (also known as ARIES) platform. ARIES allows researchers to simulate airport energy systems in a lab setting—including everything from ground equipment to electric aircraft charging—to see how the grid handles it all. 

Taylor: The team started by simulating high-demand electric flight routes to estimate power needs, then used ARIES to test how real utility systems handle those loads, disruptions, and backup setups—all before any infrastructure is built. 

Kerrin: The idea is to give airport planners and utilities a clear picture: where to put energy assets, how to design policies, and how to scale these systems safely and effectively. 

Taylor: And that’s important, because electric aircraft aren’t some distant concept; they’re already in the certification phase. That means airports must start planning for charging infrastructure now.  NREL and NASA want airports to have the tools to make informed decisions—before the demand spikes. And ÆNodes is showing how airports can build systems that support aircraft, serve the grid, and even generate revenue. 

Kerrin: To realize this vision of airports as energy nodes, NREL will show that transformative electrical buildouts are safe and valuable, using insights from its partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration around electrical aircrafts. 

Taylor: Ultimately, the  ÆNodes model could be applied to thousands of regional airports nationwide, benefitting communities everywhere. 

Kerrin: As Scott Cary, NREL’s project manager for ports and airports, put it: 

Scott: The future of flight lies in resilient and abundant energy. The airport system does not work without it. We want to make sure that airport planners and operators are able to confidently plan for this exciting future with NREL’s state-of-the-art tools, data, modeling, and analysis. 

[music] 

Taylor: From the sea to the sky—and now, underground. A new study from NREL’s thermal energy science group and the Alaska Campus explores how borehole thermal energy storage could meet heating needs in some of the coldest parts of the world. It’s part of NREL’s broader work to support energy solutions for Arctic communities. 

Kerrin: Borehole thermal energy is a new one to me...you don’t hear about this one too much! In places like Fairbanks, Alaska, heating is far more essential than cooling. Winters are long and harsh, and summers are short and mild. Using EnergyPlus, a simulation tool that models and predicts a building's energy consumption needs, the research team found that heating demand for two buildings in this study was more than five times greater than the cooling demand. 

Taylor: And because Alaska is so remote, transporting energy and building infrastructure is more costly than in more connected parts of the country. That makes electric heating an expensive option. 

Kerrin: That’s where borehole thermal energy storage comes in. NREL researchers modeled a system that pairs underground thermal storage with geothermal heat pumps to efficiently capture, store, and reuse heat. 

Taylor: The system works by drilling a series of narrow vertical boreholes underground—think of them like a giant rechargeable battery, but for heat. 

Kerrin: That’s a good way to think about it. During the summer, excess or waste heat is pumped into the ground and naturally insulated by the surrounding soil and rock. Then in winter, a water-antifreeze mixture circulates through the boreholes, absorbing that stored heat and delivering it to the geothermal heat pump.  

Taylor: Instead of trying to pull heat from freezing outdoor air, the heat pump draws from this pre-warmed fluid, making it far more efficient at delivering warmth to the building’s HVAC system. 

Kerrin: Now in this particular study, researchers modeled how well this system would perform over 20 years at two Department of Defense buildings in Fairbanks, Alaska, with waste heat pulled from a nearby coal plant. 

Taylor: They designed a field of 40 boreholes, each 91 meters deep, located about 100 meters from the buildings. They then ran two long-term simulations—one where the subsurface was “preheated” with hot water for five years, and one without preheating. 

Kerrin: In both scenarios, wells at the center of the field delivered about a third more heat than those on the edges, likely because outer wells lost heat to the surrounding ground. 

Taylor: Systems that were preheated performed even better. Underground temperatures were higher, and energy production was stronger in the first eight years of the system’s operation—showing that preheating could improve system efficiency, especially early on. 

Kerrin: Okay, so what is the takeaway here? Well, design and insulation strategies can significantly improve energy balance across a borehole field, and preheating may offer a valuable head start in cold climates. 

Taylor: And while frozen ground might seem like a barrier, the researchers found it’s not. They characterized the subsurface at the site in Fairbanks and showed that geothermal heat can be accessed at relatively shallow depths underground. 

Kerrin: And that opens the door to other geothermal solutions at this site and others like it. This study focused on feasibility, but it lays the foundation for future systems tailored to different sites, energy needs, and waste heat sources. 

Taylor: It’s one more way NREL is helping remote communities turn local conditions into reliable energy solutions—even underground. 

[music] 

Kerrin: Well, that wraps up another episode here. Whether it’s keeping the lights on in New England, charging planes of the future in Virginia, or warming buildings through an Alaskan winter, NREL is helping energy innovation happen—everywhere, it seems. 

Taylor: No kidding, they really are. I wish I could travel to all these places with our researchers. 

Kerrin: Yeah right, wouldn’t that be awesome? Me too. And with that, another great episode of The NREL Podcast comes to a close, my friends. Hey, thanks so much for joining us and listening, and please be sure to leave us a review or send us an email. Podcast@nrel.gov is that address, and who knows, you might just hear your comment—good comment!—on a future episode.  

Taylor: That’s right, and we’ll be back in two weeks with more stories and science from NREL.  

Kerrin: This episode was adapted from NREL news articles published in June and July 2025 by Julia Medeiros Coad, Connor O'Neil, and Hannah Halusker. Our theme music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino, of Drift B-C. This podcast is produced by NREL’s Communications Office.