EVERY HOUSE A NODE:

About 10 miles off the coast of New Hampshire, there's a little island that could be a snapshot of what our future on the mainland might look like when it comes to renewable energy.

Appledore Island is home to the Shoals Marine Laboratory, run jointly by the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University. But it's also a laboratory of sorts for engineering a grid that runs on a high percentage of renewable energy -- a place where the challenges and opportunities of using lots of solar and wind are already playing out, years ahead of the mainland.

Appledore isn't connected to the mainland's electricity grid, which means the remote island has to be self-sufficient when it comes to generating electricity. The island runs on what's called a microgrid, a self-contained system where the electricity being produced by solar panels and a wind turbine has to be carefully balanced with how much electricity is being used: for running lab equipment, keeping the fridge cold, purifying drinking water, or just turning on the lights.

Currently, a big chunk of the island's energy needs are met with renewable energy, but that wasn't always the case. In fact, through the mid-2000s, the laboratory was entirely powered by a diesel generator, which was both costly and a source of the kind of emissions that are driving global warming. But between 2007 and 2019, the lab reduced the use of diesel by 90%. This summer, the solar panels provided about two-thirds of the island's energy consumption, the wind turbine provided 11%, and diesel made up the remaining 22%.

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