The U.S. Department of Energy is providing a $147 million grant to support construction of an energy storage facility at a shuttered paper mill. It will hold enough wind- and solar-generated power to serve up to 85,000 homes. The proposal calls for 85 megawatts of storage capacity — the largest in New England — on part of the 400-acre site of the Lincoln pulp mill, which has been fully closed for nearly a decade. Energy storage is critical as the power grid becomes more dependent on solar and wind power by allowing electricity to be released to the grid at night and at times when there is no wind. The facility would be built and operated by Massachusetts-based Form Energy.
