Pitkin County activates 1.5 MW battery at Aspen Area Business Center; microgrid will serve public facilities, add revenue pathways

Pitkin County officials told the Board of County Commissioners on May 20 that construction and commissioning are complete for a 1.5 megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS) installed at the Aspen Area Business Center site, and described next steps for microgrid controls, maintenance contracts and potential revenue arrangements with Holy Cross Energy.

GR Fielding, Pitkin County construction and asset director, said the installed BESS can “be discharged or charged at a 1.5 megawatt rate” and has initial usable storage of about 3.6 megawatt‑hours; he noted expected degradation over decades toward roughly 2 MWh while remaining useful beyond that life span. Fielding described the microgrid arrangement as an emergency‑use capability that can run a cluster of public facilities in an outage and as a candidate for Holy Cross Energy’s market programs.

Funding and partners: County staff described a mix of funding sources including a state DOLA (Department of Local Affairs) energy grant, contributions from the airport, general fund and grants and a partnership with Holy Cross Energy. Fielding said additional capital and operation/maintenance contracts remain under negotiation and that the county has budgeted initial maintenance and power line items.

Operations and market use: Fielding said the county is working to enroll the BESS in Holy Cross’s Power Plus Flex (or similar) program to capture revenue for operations and maintenance when the battery is dispatched for grid services. He explained that, outside emergencies, the BESS primarily operates as a distributed resource on the Holy Cross grid; during certain outages the system can “island” with the nearby solar facility to sustain local critical facilities.

Emergency service and limits: With the two battery containers currently installed, the system can supply a limited number of hours if discharged at peak rate (Fielding said roughly two to three hours at full 1.5 MW draw). County facilities that are part of the microgrid also have legacy backup generators, Fielding said; the plan anticipates the BESS would extend runtime and shift to other redundancies as needed.

Next steps and risks: Staff said final microgrid software and control integration with Holy Cross will require additional commissioning once utilities complete the controller software (Fielding said Holy Cross’s controller design timeline is measured in years). The county is negotiating operations, maintenance and possible revenue agreements and expects to bring those contracts to the board. Fielding said that maintenance expertise is specialized and the county is working with the project vendor on likely ongoing maintenance agreements.

Ending: County staff framed the system as an initial investment in distributed resilience with options to expand in future phases if the county elects to add containers for more storage. The BESS is operating and undergoing final testing while staff pursue contractual and operational details.