Category: Battery Storage

President Trump’s administration revokes OHV restrictions for public lands: Plus: #ColoradoRiver slides towards “system crash” — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Plus: Colorado River slides towards “system crash”

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

June 2, 2026

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

The Trump administration is attacking public lands again, this time in an apparent effort to open more special places to off-road vehicles. Late last Friday, Trump issued an executive order revoking a Nixon-era policy aimed at ensuring “that the use of off-road vehicles on public lands will be controlled and directed so as to protect the resources of those lands, to promote the safety of all users of those lands, and to minimize conflicts among the various uses of those lands.”

No, this does not mean unfettered swarms of ATVs will be kicking up dust on your favorite public lands next week. But it does bolster the off-road vehicle lobby’s effort to open up motorized access to federal lands, and takes away one of the long-term planning tools used by land management agencies to protect those places from off-road vehicle use and abuse. 

In the nearer-term, Trump’s order could end or diminish the ban on OHVs in national parks, allowing the vehicles to travel backroads in, say, Capitol Reef National Park. This might not sound so bad: If a three-ton SUV can drive there, why not let a smaller side-by-side or four-wheeler on the same road?

The answer lies in the nature of the newer OHVs, namely “side-by-sides” or razors, which more closely resemble souped-up dune buggies than conventional SUVs. While some people use OHVs as mere modes of transportation, the vehicles are more commonly treated and utilized like recreational playthings — very powerful, fast, and noisy toys that tend to travel in herds. They therefore bring their own type of impacts. 

Alpine Loop Backcountry Scenic Byway near Lake City, Ouray, Powderhorn, Ridgway, Silverton Credit: ColoradoDirectory.com

Anyone who has traveled on or hiked around the Alpine Loop in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado on a busy summer day has likely experienced these particular impacts first-hand. Those roads were first opened up to OHVs in the early 2000s. Since then Alpine Loop traffic numbers have exploded, with at least half of the motorized traffic made up of OHVs.

Law enforcement officers now spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy trying to keep the OHV drivers on designated routes and in compliance with traffic laws. OHV crashes, often resulting in serious injury, are not uncommon. And each summer several riders surrender to the temptation to illegally leave the road — these are off-road vehicles, after all — and rip across the tundra, causing irreversible damage. Unlike regular vehicles, OHVs tend to travel in herds, spewing exhaust and kicking up dust, their collective buzzing reaching far beyond the roads on which they travel. It has become almost impossible during the high season to completely escape the incessant din of OHVs on the Alpine Loop, even in wilderness study areas.

This same phenomenon could now be coming to a national park near you.

The administration claims it eliminated the policy because it was outdated, vague, and redundant, because Congress has since passed a host of other laws protecting public lands from OHVs and other uses. The order goes on to say:

This makes very little sense. Sure, the restrictions on OHVs could hamper energy or timber development if it required destructive off-road vehicle use, but you’re not going to haul a drill rig into the backcountry on a side-by-side. And the idea that a hiker might feel “banned” from a trail because they couldn’t ride get there on an OHV is just silly. 

The dubious statement reeks of the rhetoric of the crowd that claims that motorized vehicle restrictions are locking folks out of public lands, and therefore are discriminating against the type of people who drive these vehicles. But the discrimination claim simply does not fly. Mountain bikes are banned from wilderness areas, from a majority of trails in national parks, from some trails on BLM land, and are not allowed to ride off-trail on all federal land. This has nothing to do with the people who ride the bikes, or even the funny clothes they tend to wear, and everything to do with the vehicles’ potential impacts.

Trump probably did this at the behest of the Blue Ribbon Coalition and the likes of Sen. Mike Lee, who has pushed legislation that would open up national parks to OHVs. Maybe he’s trying to garner support from somewhere, given his terrible favorability ratings. Or perhaps he’s trying to appease the motorized crowd, which is probably a bit miffed that their drug of choice — gasoline — is so damned expensive thanks to Donny’s dumb war. Maybe he’s even trying to increase national park entry fee revenues so he can funnel it to his ballroom/drone-port or his White House UFC fight.

The arrogance of the off-road vehicle lobby — Jonathan P. Thompson

Near Hite with the Henry Mountains. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

It pretty much goes without saying that if next winter is as bad as this past winter, in terms of mountain snowpack, then the collective users of the Colorado River and its infrastructure will be toast — at least figuratively (maybe literally, too?). Now, my favorite team of Colorado River wonks1 [Anne Castle,  Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn,  Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara] have crunched the latest water numbers, and they’ve found that even a nearly “normal” winter won’t stop depletion of “reasonably accessible storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, leading to “devastating consequences.” 

Back in 1999, the Colorado River’s storage system, which consists of Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and several other smaller reservoirs in the Upper and Lower basins, was almost full, holding about 60 million acre-feet of active, or available, storage. This provided a robust savings account that could be tapped during the inevitable dry spells on the notoriously fluctuating river system.

The reserve, however, was not adequate for the megadrought — or long-term aridification — that started in 2000 and continues today. Instead of following the usual up-down cycle, the Colorado River’s flows began a downward trend that is on track to hit its lowest point so far this water year, while consumptive use stayed more or less steady. Demand exceeded supply more years than not, drawing the savings account down significantly. That has forced the Bureau of Reclamation to take extraordinary measures, such as reducing downstream releases and tapping upstream reservoirs, to keep Lake Powell’s surface level from dropping below 3,500 feet, or what I call de facto dead pool 2.

Thanks in part to extra releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in May, Lake Powell’s surface level climbed slightly to 3,528 feet last month. Given that spring runoff in the Upper Basin has peaked and most tributary flows are decreasing, we can expect that number to start dropping, perhaps precipitously, at least until the monsoon arrives. 

The wonks wanted an idea of how things might play out in the slightly longer-term, so they modeled two scenarios:

In the first scenario, they assume that the Colorado River’s natural flow, or the estimated amount of water in the river without human consumption or interference, will be similar to water year 2025, when the mountain snowpack was below average but not nearly as slim as this year. They also assume that consumptive uses will remain at the lowest levels in recent years.

Natural flow: 8.5 MAF at Lees Ferry + .70 MAF from Grand Canyon and Virgin River = 9.20 MAF
Consumptive use: 3.56 MAF Upper Basin (includes evaporation and other losses) + 8.23 MAF Lower Basin + Mexico (incl. evap and other losses) = 11.79 MAF
Deficit and resulting reservoir drawdown: 2.59 MAF
Realistically accessible storage (RAS) remaining in Mead, Powell, and Flaming Gorge: 3.63 MAF

For the second, they plug in snowpack/flow numbers similar to those from water year 2023, which was a huge winter. Consumptive use would be about the same as in 2023. 

Natural flow: 18.55 MAF
Consumptive use: 13.10 MAF
Surplus: 4.83 MAF
RAS: 11.05 MAF

Under the first scenario, the BoR will almost certainly have to go to a run-of-the-river situation on Glen Canyon Dam to defend 3,500 feet. That would mean releases would be approximately equal to inflows minus evaporation and seepage from the reservoir, and might drop to 3,000 to 4,000 cubic feet per-second or even lower. In the summer of 2002 inflows at times dropped below 1,000 cfs. This would turn the river through the Grand Canyon into a relative trickle, and cause a significant drawdown of Lake Mead. 

The second scenario would be far better, but is far from an enduring solution. At best it would buy a little time, perhaps enough for the feds to build bypass tunnels around Glen Canyon Dam to allow for sustained releases below 3,500 feet. If it were followed by another three or four 2023-like winters, then things would start to look pretty darned good. 

But if it were followed by just one more dry year it would bring everything back to today’s rather dire situation.

Since there’s no way to bolster supplies, the only way out of this mess is to continue to slash demand. The paper’s authors write:

Oof.

As long as we’re on the topic, the BoR recently released its Lower Basin accounting report for 2025, which tallies up consumptive uses in the basin. As you can see from the following graphs, which the Land Desk whipped up using the BoR data, the Lower Basin uses significantly less water now than it did in 1999, just before the current megadrought began. Upper Basin consumptive use figures for 2025 are not yet available. The following figures do not include reservoir evaporation, conveyance losses, or Mexico’s use.

All three Lower Basin states have substantially reduced Colorado River water consumption since 1999. However, more cuts will be needed if current climatic and streamflow trends continue. Data: USBR, Graphic: The Land Desk

🤖 Data Center Watch 👾

Has Enchant Energy finally found a raison d’être? The Farmington-based company was created in 2019 to try to save the San Juan coal-fired power plant from retirement by retrofitting it with carbon capture equipment. Enchant would then sell the carbon to oil producers in the Permian Basin, while also receiving generous federal tax credits. Basically they wanted to turn the power plant into a taxpayer subsidized carbon dioxide factory. It flopped for various reasons. Now the San Juan plant — and all of its pollution — are no more. We suspected Enchant Energy had met a similar fate.

But then I received a press release letting me know the not-so-up upstart is not dead, but has instead signed a letter of intent with Creekstone Energy to capture carbon from the tech firm’s proposed hyperscale Delta Gigasite data center in Delta, Utah. As is often the case, Creekstone touts all of the renewable energy it plans on building for its center, but the first phase will be powered by natural gas, which emits carbon dioxide.

Enchant hopes to capture the carbon from the gas plant and convert it into marketable fuel. The company has apparently given up on trying to give coal-burning a slightly more climate-friendly veneer (after all, Trump has declared coal to be “clean” and “beautiful”). Instead, it looks like they’re jumping on the data center bandwagon, along with wannabe nuclear reactor developers and the like. 

Who knows, maybe this is the thing that finally gives Enchant some meaning. But we’re not holding our breath. After spending gobs of money on lobbying, pulling in some hefty federal grants, then failing spectacularly with the San Juan generating bid, Enchant partnered with another firm and tried to buy the Intermountain coal plant in Delta to use it to power its own data center. That didn’t work, either.

Dolores Canyon solar project outside of Cahone, Colorado, with Airproduct’s apparently defunct helium plant on the right. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

🔋Notes from the Energy Transition 🔌

Yes, the energy transition may have run into some stumbling blocks, i.e. the Trump administration’s hatred for anything that might compete with coal and oil and gas, but it’s still quietly underway. For example, out by the aforementioned, defunct San Juan coal plant, DESRI recently broke ground on two utility-scale solar installations: the 170-megawatt Foxtail Flats solar-plus-battery storage array; and the 100-MW Four Mile Mesa solar-plus-storage project. 

That’s some pretty serious generating capacity and adds to the existing San Juan solar facility nearby. Los Alamos County has signed on to purchase power from Foxtail Flats, and Meta will be drawing electricity Four Mile Mesa via PNM to power its data centers. 

Both of the new facilities are under development on Ute Mountain Ute tribal land. 

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

In last week’s comments, ncoffey94 asked what kind of bike I ride. It’s a 2023 Niner RLT, with an aluminum frame, carbon fork, and SRAM Apex parts. It’s nothing fancy and isn’t super light. But I dig it for riding on the roads, dirt, and even singletrack. It’s got 40 mm tires, so isn’t so great in the sand, and with no suspension I don’t do big drops or super-cobbly stuff. But it sure is nice having just one bike for all uses.

Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson.

1 Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen, and Katherine Tara. 

2 Water can no longer be released through the penstocks and hydropower turbine below 3,500 feet, forcing dam operators to rely on the lower river outlets for all downstream water releases. Those outlets are not engineered for sustained, long-term use, however, and could be damaged. The feared scenario looks kind of like this: The penstocks are closed; the river outlets release water faster than reservoir inflows; the reservoir surface level drops down to, say, 3,450 feet; the river outlets get damaged so must be shut down altogether, trapping the remaining water behind the dam and halting all releases until the water climbs back up to 3,500 feet. This would effectively dry up the Grand Canyon and cause Lake Mead to start plummeting as well. Of course, no one wants this to happen, so BoR is doing all it can to defend 3,500 feet, making that level the effective dead pool, even though technically 3,370 feet (the river outlet elevation) is the actual dead pool.

The state of #solar: Despite partisan rhetoric, the industry is still booming — Rebecca Egan McCarthy &  Kate Yoder (Grist.org)

May 6, 2023 – Volunteers with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) ESCAPES (Education, Stewardship, and Community Action for Promoting Environmental Sustainability) program lend a hand to Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, Colo. Bethany Speer (left) goes back for more while Nancy Trejo distributes her wheelbarrow load to the agrivoltaic plots. (Photo by Bryan Bechtold / NREL)

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Rebecca Egan McCarthy &  Kate Yoder):

April 20, 2026

Solar power is cheap, fast, and in demand as data centers consume more and more electricity.

The future looked dire for renewable energy in the United States last spring. Republicans in Congress started gutting the Inflation Reduction Act, forcing its generous tax credits for wind and solar into an early retirement. The Interior Department then rolled out a series of byzantine regulations aimed at restricting clean energy on federal land. Some feared those regulations would curb wind and solar development on private land, too.

Although these restrictions do seem to have hindered the wind industry, there are some signs that its fortunes are changing. But a year later, solar continues to boom. MAGA influencers are promoting it, there’s hope for legislation that would speed up approvals for new projects, and the industry has continued to expand over the last year as energy requirements from data centers demand fast, cheap power. The Trump administration has even signed off on some big solar projects: In February, the administration announced that it would allow several solar projects that had been blocked by the new Interior regulations to move forward. 

“I feel like there has been so much written that’s like, ‘The Trump administration is delaying this stuff. It’s holding it all up in red tape. Nothing’s getting built,’” said Hannah Hess, director of the Rhodium Group’s Clean Investment Monitor team. “When we look at the data, that’s not true.” Combined, solar and battery storage (which banks excess energy for use when the sun’s not shining) accounted for 79 percent of power generation brought online in 2025 and are expected to continue to grow by 49 percent before the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits expire at the end of 2027. 

Support for solar among rank-and-file-conservatives has fallen in recent years, caught up in partisan culture wars, but it could gain more traction in the party if it’s paired with affordability concerns. Some 69 percent of Republicans say they are supportive of solar, provided it lowered electricity costs, according to a recent poll from the research organizations GoodPower and NORC at the University of Chicago. The Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry’s primary lobbying group, has emphasized that its industry aligns with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agendaand lowers energy costs for families and businesses. “Conservative voters are drawing a clear distinction between rhetoric and practical solutions that lower costs,” read a blog post from the association in February.

Even prominent conservative figures seem to be softening toward solar. Katie Miller, a former Trump administration official and the wife of Stephen Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy, has gone so far as to herald solar as the “energy of the future.” In February, she posted to X: “Giant fusion reactor up there in the sky — we must rapidly expand solar to compete with China.” That same month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who had been a vocal critic of solar power, started saying it could be beneficial. “Is there a commercial role for solar power that can add to the grid affordable, reliable energy?” he said. “Certainly there is.” 

Data center developers have begun looking to solar as a complement to oil and gas, rather than a competitor. The incoming demand “feels crazy,” said Jim DesJardins, executive director of the Renewable Energy Industries Association of New Mexico. “It’s scary, almost. Five years ago, we were talking about an increase in load from EVs and building electrification — we’re not talking about that anymore. It’s all data centers and how are you going to power them.” This year marked the first time, said DesJardins, that the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association reached out to sponsor the renewable energy association’s annual conference.

Solar is, by far, the cheapest and fastest way to bring energy online, especially as the shortage of gas turbines — internal combustion engines that convert fuel into a steady, reliable energy — in the U.S. creates yearslong delays to build new power plants that run on natural gas. [ed. emphasis mine] The technology is crucial for data centers that need to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “The backlog alone [for turbines] is five to nine years,” said Mike Hall, CEO of Anza Renewables, an energy intelligence and procurement platform based in California. “Then you’ve got to permit it. Then you’ve got to be near a gas pipeline for fuel, and then you’ve got the climate and the carbon issues.” A recent study from the analytics company Sightline Climate found that half of data center deals were expected to be delayed due to power constraints and local opposition, and developers are beginning to realize that waiting in line for a gas turbine could spell doom for their operation. 

There are still some obstacles ahead for solar power, however. “We’ve definitely seen examples from our developer customers where the Department of Interior rules are creating challenges for their projects on federal land, but we haven’t seen that it’s really slowed down development on private land,” said Hall. “The bottlenecks are typically still local permitting and interconnection with utilities — those are still major challenges, and we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in either area yet.”

Shortly before Congress adjourned for its winter recess in December, the House passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, also known as the SPEED ACT, a bipartisan bill that would streamline the permitting process for energy, infrastructure, and transportation projects by overhauling the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Signed by President Nixon in 1970, NEPA requires federal agencies to consider how proposed infrastructure projects or drilling permits would affect the environment before approving them. Permitting reform is the rare, bipartisan issue that has sparked real enthusiasm on both sides of the aisle. 

After a scuffle over the Trump administration’s decisions to shut down offshore wind projects, which judges ruled invalid, Democratic senators Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse are coming back to the negotiating table to hammer out a deal. “Right now, we’re leaving electrons on the table thanks to Trump’s deliberate attacks on clean energy — forcing Americans to pay higher electricity bills,” Heinrich’s office told Grist. “To lower costs, this administration needs to stop stalling and slow walking clean energy projects and take the politics out of permitting reform.”

The war in Iran, which has caused oil prices to skyrocket, may serve to boost interest in solar power even more — especially as a way to combat rising electricity costs and promote energy independence. “Energy poverty has always been a problem in the U.S., and it’s gotten significantly worse in recent years,” said Brad Townsend, vice president of policy and outreach at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an environmental policy nonprofit. He pointed to a study from the nonprofit RMI, formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute, that found 1 in 3 households were struggling to pay their utility bills. “I think folks in the administration are increasingly becoming aware of the fact that we can’t turn away renewable energy.” 

In terms of the geopolitical reasons to support solar, “no one has fought a war over the sun,” DesJardins told Grist. “Not yet, anyways.” 

How batteries are changing #Colorado’s energy game — Allen Best (BigPivots.com)

The dimensions of batteries was demonstrated during the public unveiling of a project for Holy Cross Energy near Glenwood Springs and Carbondale in late 2022. Those particularly batteries did not work out as expected and are being replaced, although two later battery projects in the Hoiy Cross service territory along Interstate 70 west of Glenwood Springs were immediately successful. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

March 19, 2026

Utilities are rapidly integrating energy storage places from Durango to a tiny place near the Nebraska border now best known for storing grain

Amherst lies in northeastern Colorado, about seven miles from the Nebraska border. It has a gas station, a Lutheran church, and a population of 58. Dozens of grain silos, each 110 feet tall, loom over the community. Together, they can store 2.7 million bushels, mostly wheat and corn.

In about a year, Amherst will also be storing electricity. Highline Electric, a cooperative based in nearby Holyoke, plans to install lithium-iron batteries with two megawatts of storage.

Dennis Herman, the general manager of Highline, explained that the battery storage will enable Highline to lower its peak demands for electricity, primarily in late afternoon to early evening hours. This will save money for Highline and its wholesale provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. Like most everything, electricity typically costs most when in highest demand.

Battery storage is becoming commonplace in Colorado’s energy landscape. Utilities large and small are embracing lithium-iron batteries as prices have continued to plunge.

Xcel Energy by the end of March will have 200 MW of battery storage available. The company expects to have 1,725 MW of capacity by 2028. Tri-State, Colorado’s second largest electrical generator, plans 550 MW in Colorado and another 150 in New Mexico.

Batteries represent a crucial step in the decarbonization of our energy. Fuel agnostic, they can store electricity generated by natural gas or even coal plants. Most commonly they are paired with renewable energy, particularly solar. Utilities with large-scale batteries can stock up on cheap energy to meet hours of peak demand, as in the case at Amherst.

“As we move to a much higher percentage of renewables on the grid, storage takes on a role that is more and more important,” said Will Toor, director of the Colorado Energy Office. “When you think about how we will keep the lights on in the future in a grid with high amounts of renewables, storage just gets more and more important.”

Batteries can also serve other purposes. For example, they can provide electricity in areas of the distribution grid with potential weaknesses, such as places that will lose power if a power line goes down.

Robin Lunt likens the role batteries are playing in energy to that of refrigeration in food supply chains.

“You can move lettuce from California to the Midwest if you have refrigeration. And if you don’t, you’re just betting on the weather,” said Lunt, chief commercial officer for Denver-based Guzman Energy. “Storage is a new tool that smooths out the volatility that currently exists with energy.”

Taking a national perspective, Dennis Wamsted, an analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, sees the “blistering pace of the buildout of solar and battery storage” continuing for at least the next two years. “This allows renewables to gain more market share from coal and gas in U.S. power markets.,” he said in a new report he co-authored.

“Battery storage is about to change how the utility industry operates, and it will be for the better,” he said.

Sharp declines in prices have been crucial in spurring rapid deployment of utility-scale four-hour lithium-batteries. Bloomberg NEF, a research organization, reported that costs in 2025 fell more than 27% even as other clean energy costs rose. Taking a longer view, Energy Storage News in December reported that battery costs during the prior decade fell an average 20% annually even as installations rose 80% annually. Solar recorded parallel cost declines.

Lazard, a global assessment management firm, in 2025 found the sharp price declines were driven by technology advances, including increased cell capacity and energy density. An oversupply of battery cells resulting from lower-than-expected demand for EVs also contributed to the reduced prices.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump in 2025 gutted many elements of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2023. Tax credits for battery storage were largely spared and benefit Highline and other not-for-profit electric cooperatives.

First utility scale in 2012

Batteries have stored electricity since Thomas Edison was tinkering in his New Jersey laboratories a century ago. Only in 2012, however, was the first utility-scale application battery storage project implemented in the United States. That was a pilot project in Oregon.

Colorado’s era of utility-scale battery storage began service in November 2018. Brighton-based United Power, an electric cooperative serving a broad arc along metropolitan Denver’s northern fringe, wanted to begin understanding how batteries fit into the puzzle of the energy future.

“Understanding storage is the next logical step in the progression of renewable generation,” said Jerry Marizza in 2018 when announcing the batteries. He was then United Power’s new business director. “Without the ability to store energy, renewables will have an artificial cap placed on their utilization.”

Marizza, who now lives in Arizona, remembers utilities resisting batteries as they had also once resisted solar. Many were blind-sided when prices tumbled. “They just didn’t want to learn about this stuff because they didn’t see any value in doing it,” he said.

“To me, it was a no-brainer,” said Marizza. “We didn’t do it because we wanted to become Renewables USA, although that was a benefit. We did it because it made business sense.”

United Power has rapidly deployed lithium-ion battery storage systems in its service territory north of metropolitan Denver. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

The payback on investments has declined to six or eight years. Payback on an electrical substation – crucial to delivering electricity — is 50 years.

In some situations, the payback can be far quicker. In 2024, United added 120 megawatts. Those batteries paid for themselves almost immediately by avoiding the need to buy electricity from other sources during times of high summer temperatures. That saved the cooperative $300,000 a month. Plus, cheap solar can be used to recharge the batteries, further saving money.

United’s first experiment at the cooperative’s office along Interstate 25 between Longmont and Firestone now looks humble. The Tesla four-megawatt batteries sit behind chain link fences and within an enclosure little larger than a typical suburban two-car garage.

One measure of batteries — the one used mostly in this story — is in simple megawatts. A different measure, megawatt-hours, defines how much electric energy can be delivered from a battery over time. United’s 4 MW of storage, for example, has 16 MW-hours. The 2 MW batteries at Amherst will have 8 MW-hours (also called MWh).

Think of megawatts being the water sitting in a jug and megawatt-hours being the time it takes to empty the jug.

United’s small 4-MW experiment from 2018 was slow to be surpassed. Finally, in 2023, Holy Cross Energy began using 5 MW batteries (15 MWh) coupled with 13,500 solar panels at the Colorado Mountain College Spring Valley Campus above Carbondale. Soon after, Xcel began use of far larger battery arrays.

Tri-State is a case study in this altered thinking. Twenty years ago it saw a future consisting almost entirely of coal. By 2018 it had abandoned those ambitions but still discouraged United’s battery experiment. At that time it provided wholesale power to United. Now, Tri-State is working with 10 of its member cooperatives, including Highline, most of them in Colorado, in exploring utility-scale batteries as part of Tri-State’s demand-response program.

“The overall goal of this Tri-State program is to introduce flexibility to electric system loads, which is becoming more necessary as the generating assets being built today are not dispatchable in the traditional sense,” explained Highline’s Herman.

A striking example of the growing and valuable role of batteries can be found in California. In a December 2025 New York Times story, Ivan Penn pointed out that California officials had often asked residents in recent years to use less electricity on hot summer days to prevent power outages. Those alerts ceased after 2022, he wrote, largely because batteries have allowed California to use its abundant solar power well into evening hours.

California’s battery capacity, 14,583 MW, dwarfed Colorado’s 459 MW as of January, according to Clearview, a data-tracking company dedicated to the clean energy transition. Colorado, though, has had a far more rapid rate of growth. It had gained 102 times as much battery capacity by 2025 as compared to the 30-fold increase in California.

Texas, a politically red state, had an adoption rate that dwarfed those of bluish California and mostly blue Colorado: 4,100% since 2020. Batteries are apolitical.

A game changer

Mark Gabriel calls batteries a game changer. He is the chief executive of United Power. The electrical cooperative has nearly 120,000 members. They include data centers, oil-and-gas operators, and expansive suburban neighborhoods. United’s 6% annual growth in demand ranks highest of all Colorado electrical utilities.

How can that demand be satisfied? Wind generation remains the least expensive energy but requires transmission from mostly distant locations. That transmission is costly and typically takes a decade or more to build, Gabriel points out. Renting space on transmission lines is like driving in the toll lane of a highway.

Gas is another option, and United managed to get its natural gas plant near Keenesburg on line in July 2025 after being commissioned just 20 months earlier. The same plant might take three to five years now because of constricted supply lines.

Batteries have tightened supply chains, too, and somewhat heightened prices of late. But they can be installed within 10 months. Too, they can use existing infrastructure. In other words, no new transmission lines needed.

Substations are commonly located in areas where demand for electricity is congregated. “It’s in the distribution system that the batteries have real value,” said Gabriel.

Siting can be a challenge in areas where land is already at a premium. They do take up space, if far less than solar farms. Visually, though, they are boring, small monoliths 8 to 10 feet tall, erected in rows.

United today has 119.5 MW of battery capacity, second in Colorado only to Xcel’s existing 200 MW. Both utilities plan far more.

United Power’s first foray into battery storage was in an area little bigger than a suburban garage behind its office along Interstate 25 between Firestone and Longmont. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

United plans 200 megawatt batteries more by 2027 in a project south of Brush called Fortress that will be coupled with 200 MW of solar. That 319.5 MW of battery storage will, if necessary, enable United to meet 40% to 50% of demand.

Xcel Energy is also rapidly expanding its battery capacity. This year it expects to complete two 200-MW battery installations, one near Brush and the second in South Park. In addition, Xcel is contracted to buy capacity from others through power purchase agreements n Adams County and Pueblo County and perhaps elsewhere.

The company is also seeking approval from state regulators to add 400 MW of battery storage adjacent to its Hayden coal plant.

Batteries are also making inroads in homes and businesses. Two electrical cooperatives, Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy and Fort Collins-based Poudre Valley Electric, have incentives for home batteries, as does Xcel Energy.

Higher prices for these small-scale applications have so far discouraged broad adoption. Multi-day outages during the last year resulting from high-wind events along the foothills west of Boulder and Denver are also spurring purchases for home use.

Microgrids are also becoming more common. At Red Feather Lake, northwest of Fort Collins, 140-kilowatt (446-kilowatt-hour) Tesla Powerpack batteries are coupled with solar and propane generation.

This microgrid is meant to provide power for fire, emergency medical services, and other critical community functions in case Red Feather Lake is cut off from the outside world, as nearly happened during the Cameron Peak Fire in 2021. As was, the fire forced evacuation of the community.

Aspen had a close call in 2018 when it came within one burning electric pole of losing power during the Lake Christine Wildfire. Now, it has a small microgrid for emergency services. So does a hospital at Cortez, among others.

In Durango, La Plata Electric was awarded a state grant for a microgrid at the Mountain Middle School. The electrical cooperative would add battery storage to couple with existing rooftop solar to allow the school to become a haven in case of extended power outages.

A setback because of setbacks

Batteries have occasionally posed problems. Batteries installed for Holy Cross Energy above Glenwood Springs in 2022 underperformed. The manufacturer, Powin, has gone bankrupt, and those batteries are now being replaced with a new Tesla utility-scale battery system. Phil Armstrong, the power manager for Holy Cross Energy, said he expects the new batteries to be in operation soon. Two more recent battery installations worked immediately and as expected.

Wildfire potential has slowed deployment of batteries in La Plata County. The county has had several major wildfires in the last 25 years. Continued drought combined with warming temperatures cause worries of worse to come.

California has had two fires caused by batteries in recent years. At the most recent, in January 2025, anywhere from 55% to 80% of the 100,000 lithium-ion batteries at the Moss Landing Vistra Energy Storage Facility burned, causing concern about air pollution in the Monterey Bay area. As of January 2026, the cause had not been determined, according to Inside Climate News.

Does La Plata County have a legitimate worry about fire? The Durango Herald, in a December editorial, pointed out that Moss Landing relied on older technology and pre-2018 fire codes.

“Battery safety has advanced quickly,” the newspaper said. It cited a National Labs report of 97% decline in battery energy storage system failure rates since 2018 “thanks to modern fire testing, safer chemistries like lithium-iron phosphate, and strict codes.”

Wamsted, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, had much the same to say: The big fire at Moss Landing was a mess, clearly, but it used a construction technique no longer used across the industry,” he said. “Those batteries were not containerized, simply placed in the turbine building of the old plant. Now, everything is in a container, so if you have a fire, it stays little.”

In January, the county commissioners voted 2-1 to mandate a 200-foot setback from property lines. That leaves only one of the electrical cooperative’s 28 substations in the county eligible for battery storage without a variance.

The Herald said this approach doesn’t add safety. “It adds delay, cost, and uncertainty.”

Chris Hansen, CEO of La Plata Energy, makes a point as Robert Kenney, CEO of Xcel Energy’s Colorado operations, listens during a recent solar and storage association conference in Denver. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

“Hansen had urged La Plata County to let hazard-mitigation analysis determine the appropriate property setbacks. “Unfortunately, they decided to use a flat number instead,” he said.

It makes our job harder. It makes it more difficult to get a battery project done in La Plata County at the places we think are best. Really, what we’re going to do is show the county that we can do it safely and reliably. We have a site where we can do that right out of the gate, where there’s enough space, and we’ll then cross the next bridge when we get there.”

La Plata Electric’s second project will be in neighboring Archuleta County, where a site has been identified as having urgent need for storage.

Adams, Arapahoe, Denver, and El Paso along with the city of Fort Collins have already adopted codes governing batteries. So have county commissioners in Pitkin County, which Hansen contends has as much fire risk at La Plata. None, he says, are restrictive.

Jeremiah Garrick, of the COSSA Institute, the educational arm of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, reports Moffat County has also started work on regulations, as have Teller, Delta, Washington and several other counties scattered across Colorado. Logan County adopted regulations in concert with other regulations in anticipation of a hyperscale data center.

Future batteries

Lithium-ion batteries now rule but will likely be displaced in the next few years by lithium-ion phosphate, solid-state, and sodium-ion batteries.

“You’ve already seen Xcel Energy and United Power be able to get these into tighter footprints in a very safe way,” said Hansen. And that will be even easier when new technologies, solid state and sodium-ion batteries, are available in the market, because they basically have no flammability or oxidization risk at all. So you’ll be able to put them in even tighter footprints than the lithium-ion technology.”

Toor, at the Colorado Energy Office, similarly sees varieties of long-duration storage entering the picture.

Pueblo remains scheduled to be the site of deployment of a 100-hour iron-air storage collaboration between Form Energy and Xcel Energy.. A similar collaboration is alreayd underway in Minnesota.

In Pueblo, Xcel Energy, working with Form Energy, plans to deploy 100-hour iron-air storage. The project depends upon federal funding, and the Department of Energy in the Trump administration hit a pause on the project in 2025. Xcel now says it plans to have this new long-time battery storage technology operating in early 2028. Xcel and Form expect to have a project in Minnesota on line sometime in 2026.

Colorado also has several companies trying to be part of this new future.

Solid Power, a company with offices in Louisville and a factory in Thornton, is focused on solid-state batteries. “We need a new breed of battery that looks, acts, and is built like today’s lithium-ion batteries, but that comes with the benefits consumers and automakers have been seeking for decades: longer life, increased safety and lower costs,” the company states.

The company is focused on the auto market, but as Tesla’s batteries demonstrate, the technologies cross lanes from automotive to utilities.

Synthio, which has roots in the Boulder-Golden-Broomfield triangle, specializes in chemistries, including batteries.

In short, storage during the last few years has become the frontier of this big pivot in energy. What may be most remarkable is that the first batteries of any scale were not used in Colorado until little more than seven years ago.

Into the detailed weeds, if you wish:

Colorado Springs Utilities

Colorado Springs Utilities gained access to 100 MW of battery storage in 2025 and plans another 100 MW in “coming years.”

Holy Cross Energy

Holy Cross Energy has three solar-plus-storage projects at the Colorado Mountain College campus, Parachute, and Rifle. They collectively have 55 MW of storage and 24.5 of solar generation.

Platte River Power Authority

Fort Collins-based Platte River Power Authority has a battery adjacent to the Rawhide power plant. Relatively soon, working with NextEra Energy, it will have 100 MW, 4-hour (400 MWh) utility scale battery project in Weld County . Platte River is also working to add four 5-MW/20-MWh battery storage system batteries in each of its four communities: Longmont, Estes Park, Loveland, and Fort Collins.

Tri-State Generation

The portfolio approved by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission calls for 650 MW of battery storage as follows:

  • Montrose County, 50 MW
  • Moffat County, 200 MW
  • Kit Carson County,150 MW
  • Other places in eastern Colorado, 150 MW
  • Plus 200 MW in New Mexico.

United Power

United today has 119.5 megawatts and plans another 200 MW to be completed by December 2027.

Xcel Energy

The company’s Rocky Mountain Battery Energy Storage System has 200 MW/800MWh of storage.

Coming online by the end of 2027:

  • A 200 MW/800 MWh of storage near the Pawnee coal plant, near Brush.
  • South Park 200 MW/400MWh. Both projects are expected to come online by the end of 2027.

In addition, Xcel is contracting with several other projects through power purchase agreements. Two will come online in 2027, two in 2028. This is in addition to two already in service.