Opinion: The first big energy test for Maine’s next governor

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 5, 2026

A problem Maine has never seriously confronted: we plan the grid to serve peak demand but make almost no coordinated effort to reduce those peaks instead of buying new equipment. We treat demand as something to serve rather than manage, and doing so may be the single largest untapped source of savings on Maine bills. Maine keeps sizing infrastructure to a handful of peak hours without asking whether those hours can be reduced at lower cost.