Montgomery Microgrid Charging Depot P3, Maryland

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Montgomery County, Maryland leveraged its progressive energy purchasing regulations to create a public-private partnership with AlphaStruxure, a joint venture of Schneider Electric and the Carlyle Global Infrastructure Opportunity Fund, to build a microgrid depot to charge county-owned electric buses. This project will help prepare the site for a minimum of 70 electric buses that will be operated from the facility including transitioning 44 diesel buses in Ride On Montgomery County’s fleet to electric. The infrastructure will be housed at the Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot. The Brookville Bus Depot will be the first of its kind to integrate microgrid controls and solar canopies with electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The microgrid will use energy that originates from solar panels at a bus depot rather than the traditional electricity grid — the process used by most transit agencies with electric buses. The goal is to provide sustainability, reliability, and resilience for the county's transportation system. Electric bus charging, incorporating clean energy production technologies, will enable the County to provide sustainable, resilient, and reliable energy supply for bus charging and site operations. The project will include the following: 2 Megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic canopies that will provide electrical power to the buses and to the battery storage systems 4.3-Megawatt Hours (MWH) battery storage 2 MW of natural gas generation Microgrid controller The 5.6 MW microgrid includes distributed energy generation, energy storage and over 2 MW of charging capacity. AlphaStruxure will implement a strategy to transition the onsite gas generation to carbon neutral sources in the near future, allowing the microgrid to run on 100 percent renewable energy in alignment with the County’s goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2035. The county structures energy-as-a-service (EaaS) approach where a third-party implements advanced energy infrastructure equipment that supports charging a bus fleet. Through environmental credits, tax credits and other incentives the county intends to use a minimum amount of county capital. This approach allows the county to deploy the infrastructure with no upfront costs, instead of allocating that investment over time as an operating cost for the transit agency.

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