Powder River Energy Adds a 5 MW Battery and 1.25 MW of Solar for Its First Self-Dispatched Power
- Microgrids News On-Site Generation & Microgrids
Marin Holt
- 0
- 7 minutes read
- Battery power: 5 MW
- Battery energy: 21.6 MWh
- Solar capacity: 1.25 MW
- Total project cost: 23.5 million dollars
- Expected annual power cost saving: 1 million dollars
Powder River Energy Corporation is a rural electric cooperative in northeast Wyoming. It is building a 5 MW battery and a 1.25 MW solar array at its Moorcroft Substation. PowerSecure, a Southern Company subsidiary, is the developer. The LaBelle Prairie project carries a total cost of 23.5 million dollars and is targeted to run in 2027. It will be the first generation the cooperative has ever dispatched itself.
PRECorp announced the project on April 20, 2026. CEO Brian Mills said construction would start later in the summer with dirt work at the substation, followed by the battery containers and then the solar panels. PowerSecure and Microgrid Knowledge set out the full design in August.
The battery is a KORE Power system rated at 5 MW with 21.6 MWh of energy capacity. That is a little over four hours at full output. The solar array is 1.25 MW direct current and ground mounted. It sits near the PRECorp line service shop north of Interstate 90 at Exit 153. The National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative is a partner on the project.
The economics are a demand-charge play, not a solar play
PRECorp expects the system to cut its annual wholesale power costs by as much as 1 million dollars. Read that against the hardware and the source of the saving is clear. A 1.25 MW solar array in Wyoming produces roughly 2,500 MWh a year. At wholesale prices that energy is worth a few hundred thousand dollars at most. The battery, not the panels, carries the business case.
Cooperatives like PRECorp buy power under contracts. Those contracts price a large share of the bill on the single hour of highest demand. Shaving that one peak with 21.6 MWh of storage moves more money than the solar array generates. The solar mostly keeps the battery fed and adds a small energy credit.
Why It Matters
Federal support does the other half of the work. PRECorp puts its own share as low as 11.4 million dollars against the 23.5 million dollar total. A federal loan program and tax credits cover the rest. That is a subsidy rate near 51 percent. Strip it out and the math breaks. A 1 million dollar annual saving against 23.5 million dollars of capital returns the money in more than 23 years. The battery will not last that long. At 11.4 million dollars the payback lands near 11 years, inside the asset life.
So this project is not evidence that co-op storage now pencils on its own. It is evidence that the tax credit and the loan program decide whether it pencils. Cooperatives weighing similar projects should price the same build without the federal share before they treat the Wyoming result as a precedent.
The reliability argument stands on its own terms. PRECorp serves industrial coal-bed and oil load across a thin rural network where outages are long. A battery at the substation gives the cooperative backup capacity it did not have. That value is real, and it does not show up in the 1 million dollar figure.
Critical Perspective
PRECorp puts its own share at 11.4 million dollars of a 23.5 million dollar build, so federal loans and tax credits carry close to half the project. PowerSecure won 23 million dollars for three battery microgrids in New Mexico on comparable terms, which makes this a repeatable financing structure rather than a Wyoming breakthrough. The 1 million dollar annual saving also assumes the cooperative’s peak hour stays where it sits today, and the coal-bed and oil load PRECorp serves has moved that peak before. If the tax credit schedule shifts before the 2027 in-service date, does the cooperative still build it?
Sources
- Powder River Energy Corporation: PRECorp announces update on solar and power storage project
- Microgrid Knowledge: PowerSecure’s LaBelle Prairie solar and storage project designed to boost cooperative grid
- Solar Power World: PowerSecure to build solar and storage project for Wyoming utility co-op
- Solar Builder: PowerSecure, PRECorp partner for Wyoming energy storage project
- Cowboy State Daily: Powder River Energy plans 23.5 million dollar solar-battery project near Moorcroft
