Construction of the nation’s largest transit microgrid is underway in Montgomery County, Maryland, providing infrastructure to support the ongoing transition of suburban Washington County, DC, to a transit fleet of 100% zero emission buses.
Developed with “energy-as-a-service” provider AlphaStruxure, which will own and operate the microgrid, the project at the county’s existing 475,000-square-foot Equipment Maintenance and Traffic Operations Center (EMTOC) will provide 5, 65 MWDC of rooftop and rooftop solar generation and 6.88 MWh of battery energy storage. Augmenting the microgrid with a 1 MW hydrogen electrolyzer will create the East Coast’s first bus depot to produce green hydrogen on-site, allowing the Montgomery County Department of Transportation to augment its fleet with battery electric buses and hydrogen fuel cell. Many of these new vehicles will operate on the county’s bus rapid transit networks, which serve a significant number of low-income and minority communities.
Mortenson is the design-build contractor for the project, with WSP USA as the engineer of record. Scheduled to become operational in 2025, the new microgrid will combine with the two-year-old Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot to power a total of approximately 335 emissions-free transit buses, as well as site buildings and facilities respective
In addition to the ability to supply up to 2 MW of renewable energy to the region’s power grid, the EMTOC microgrid will be designed to operate in “island mode” indefinitely, ensuring uninterrupted service during grid outages or blackouts. electricity and other emergency situations.
MCOT currently uses more than 3.8 million gallons of fuel per year to operate fossil fuel-powered buses in the second-largest transit fleet in metropolitan Washington, with some routes as long as 300 miles of long The county expects the new EMTOC microgrid to reduce emissions by 4,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.
