• Montgomery County’s David F. Bone Equipment Maintenance and Transit Operation Center is now home toa 6.8 MW microgrid, the largest at a transit depot in the United States
  
• The microgrid, featuring 9,800 solar panels, will support a fleet of 200 vehicles and five buildings, delivering electrification and resilience at scale.
  
• The EMTOC project builds on the partners’ successful Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot, a 6.5 MW microgrid operating since 2022.
  

DERWOOD, MD., April 30, 2026 — Today, Montgomery County, Maryland (County), and AlphaStruxure, a leader in Energy as a Service (EaaS) infrastructure solutions, announced that construction had successfully completed at the David F. Bone Equipment Maintenance and Transit Operation Center (EMTOC) microgrid, the largest transit depot microgrid in the nation.

The integrated energy system now at EMTOC includes on-site solar generation, battery energy storage, and electric vehicle chargers. The intelligent system provides resilient power for the County’s transit buses while enabling electrification at scale.

Quick facts

• Total capacity of 6.8 megawatts, including 4.8 MW of solar generation, 2 MW / 6.9 MWh of battery energy storage, and 2.375 MW of charging capacity
• Features 9,800 panels spread across 16 canopies, enough generation to power about 500 Maryland homes for one year
• Charging infrastructure includes 17 total charging units and 42 dispensers, including five 360 kW fast-charging pantographs
• Intelligent system features integrated controls and software systems for advanced energy and charge management
• Infrastructure ready to support a future on-site hydrogen electrolyzer
• Project delivered for zero upfront costs via AlphaStruxure’s EaaS model
• Construction completed within 14 months without disrupting transit service at the existing depot

Investing in resilience and electrification at scale

The County operates one of the largest bus fleets in the Washington, D.C. region, and EMTOC is its largest depot within its Ride On transit network. At full buildout, the depot is expected to support approximately 200 buses, including both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, enabling the County to scale its fleet over time.

“This microgrid project will support the County’s very aggressive zero-emission bus fleet transition goal of having an emission-free fleet by 2035,” said Montgomery County Executive, Marc Elrich. “We are aggressively moving towards cleaner energy and cleaner transportation, and we are leading the way, this project is a model for counties nationally.”

Partners in intelligent energy infrastructure

“The EMTOC microgrid is built to orchestrate highly variable changes in energy supply and demand, said DGS Director David Dise. “Charging several dozen electric buses at once can create a large demand spike, which the microgrid will meet with an ever-changing mix of solar, battery, and grid energy. We are also protected from power outages as the system can go into ‘island mode’ via on-site power generation. This project advances us as a trailblazer in climate resiliency.”

AlphaStruxure and the County worked closely with the local utility, Pepco, to deploy the microgrid and integrate it with the broader grid network. The system is designed to support bidirectional energy flows and coordinated grid interaction. Given these operational demands, the EMTOC microgrid is not just the largest, but also one of the most advanced transit energy infrastructure systems in the United States.

Managing all this complex infrastructure is AlphaStruxure, a company that partnered with the County to deploy the Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot microgrid in 2022. AlphaStruxure’s EaaS model enables the County to deploy this infrastructure without capital costs. The model also means AlphaStruxure takes on the complexity of designing, financing, building, owning, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure while the County focuses on its core mission. AlphaStruxure’s energy system is intelligently designed to deliver on complex operational objectives, giving the County confidence it will have the energy it needs to keep its electric fleet on the roads even in grid outages.

“EMTOC represents a new standard for how the next generation of mobility infrastructure can be designed, built, and operated,” said Nicola Santamaria Senior Vice President of Construction & Operations at AlphaStruxure. “The buses and chargers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a fleet transition — you need to make sure the energy infrastructure is deployed in parallel. The County continues to lead by aligning infrastructure investment with long-term transit planning. EMTOC, along with its sister site, Brookville, proves that this level of infrastructure can be delivered quickly, without disrupting transit service, and through a model that reduces financial barriers and operational complexity.”

National leaders in resilient and electrified transit

With Brookville and now EMTOC reaching the operational stage, the County continues to set the pace nationally in electrified and resilient transit infrastructure. The County has established long-term goals to modernize its infrastructure and transition its transit fleet to zero-tailpipe-emission vehicle technologies. The EMTOC project is part of a broader strategy to align energy infrastructure with fleet electrification, enabling the County to scale battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses over time while strengthening the resilience of critical public services. The EMTOC project will provide infrastructure to support Montgomery County’s long-term plans of building a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, called Flash, providing faster, more frequent transit throughout the County.

Montgomery County’s Department of General Services, Department of Transportation, and Office of Energy and Sustainability led the project in partnership with AlphaStruxure. The EMTOC microgrid project was awarded $1.6 million from the Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) to help cover costs under the MEA “Resilient Maryland Grant Program.” Project partners include Mortenson for design-build; Schneider Electric for microgrid controls, battery energy storage, and electrical infrastructure; WSP as engineer of record; AZZO for network and cybersecurity; Ampcontrol for charge management software; Heliox for EV charging hardware; and Pepco for utility coordination and interconnection. Project lenders include Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) and the tax equity partner is Foss & Company.