Massachusetts puts $40.3 million of batteries into schools, public housing and sewer plants, and publishes no price for an avoided outage hour

The Healey-Driscoll administration announced on or about 18 September 2026 that the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources had awarded more than $40 million, reported by several outlets as $40.3 million, across 36 projects under the Advancing Massachusetts Power Energy Storage Grant Program. The recipients are schools, affordable and public housing developments, community centres, public works departments and wastewater treatment plants. The governor's framing was about "keeping the lights on when communities need it most".

The interesting feature is not the amount. It is where the asset ends up. In a utility-administered resilience programme, ratepayer money buys equipment that a utility or its contractor owns, sites and dispatches. Here the grant goes to the building's owner, so the battery is booked by a school district, a housing authority or a water and sewer commission. That is ownership at the edge in the plain sense of the phrase, and it is the reason a programme that looks like ordinary state capital spending belongs in a decentralization ledger at all.

The detail bears that out. Reporting by mgrid.org on 22 September puts the Community Resilience category at 28 awards worth $32,380,532, covering 10.26 MW and 44.14 MWh. Ten of the 28 go to affordable or public housing and seven more to schools. Springfield Water and Sewer takes $2,500,000 for 2.5 MW and 10.03 MWh. Braintree's public works department takes $2,500,000 for 1.25 MW and 4.5 MWh. Cape Cod Technical High School takes $1,319,632 for 250 kW and 1.728 MWh. At the other end of the range, the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts takes $71,800 for 23 kW and 80 kWh. A separate long-duration award at Berkshire East Mountain Resort is reported at 4 MW and 80 MWh, which on its own exceeds the entire Community Resilience category's energy capacity.

That spread is the story. mgrid.org calculates state funding across the awards at between $56 and $764 per kWh, a thirteenfold range, and notes that the state has not published "a cost-effectiveness screen alongside the awards". There are perfectly ordinary reasons a small battery in an old building costs several times more per kWh than a large one at a treatment plant: site work, electrical upgrades, fire code, the fixed cost of a design that does not shrink with the system. None of that is suspicious. It is also not what a thirteenfold range on its own tells you, because the same range is equally consistent with a programme that never priced its objective.

And there is an objective to price. Twenty-eight separate purchases at different prices per kWh imply a number: what the Commonwealth thinks an avoided outage hour is worth at a dialysis-dependent housing block, at a school used as a cooling centre, at a sewage plant that overflows when the pumps stop. That number is what makes one award at $764 per kWh a bargain and another at $56 a waste. It does not appear to have been published, and without it, comparing the awards is arithmetic in search of a denominator.

One caution on the figures, which is unresolved rather than resolvable here. The capacity totals do not agree across the coverage. Microgrid Knowledge reports more than 13 MW across all 36 projects. mgrid.org reports 10.26 MW for the 28 community awards plus 4 MW for the single long-duration project. Energy-Storage.News reports approximately 10 MW or 44 MWh statewide, which is the community subcategory presented as the programme. The state's own release was not readable when this was written. Until the full award table is in hand, the safest description of what Massachusetts bought is thirty-six batteries in buildings that the public or its non-profits own, at prices that vary by more than an order of magnitude, for a purpose the state has not put a price on.