Massachusetts is spending $40.3 million to put battery backup power into schools, a jail, public works facilities, affordable housing complexes and even a ski resort, part of a statewide push to keep the lights on when storms knock out the grid. The money, spread across 36 projects, is expected to add roughly 10 megawatts of new battery-storage capacity to communities from Cape Cod to the Berkshires.
The funding breaks into three buckets: community resilience, safety and education, and long-duration energy storage, according to MassLive. Governor Maura Healey said the investments are designed to lower energy costs while keeping critical facilities powered during outages, and the grants are aimed specifically at helping sites stay online during extreme weather and extended power loss.
Energy Resources Commissioner Elizabeth Mahony said most of the money is headed toward environmental justice communities. She said these communities tend to face longer power outages, an aging grid, and higher energy bills than other parts of the state.
Outage risks are not evenly distributed across Massachusetts. A 2026 analysis of utility records from 2013 through 2022 found a median of 7.3 outages per town each year; towns with large Environmental Justice populations experienced more frequent mild outages, while severe outages were most common in rural towns and developing suburbs, according to The Journal of Urban Health analysis. The findings add nuance to the state’s focus on environmental justice communities: the pattern depends partly on how often outages occur and how widely they affect a town.
Water Plants and Public Works Get $2.5 Million Apiece
Three of the largest single awards went to municipal infrastructure. The Springfield Water and Sewer Authority’s wastewater treatment plant received $2.5 million, as did the Braintree Department of Public Works and Lowell Regional Water Utilities, each also landing a $2.5 million grant. Community resilience projects like these are meant to cover public works facilities, wastewater treatment plants, and schools, per the same report.
Schools took a substantial share of the community resilience money. Falmouth High School and Acushnet’s Ford Middle School each received $1.36 million grants, while Mohawk Trail Regional School in Shelburne Falls got $1.44 million and Chelmsford’s McCarthy Middle School received $1.34 million. Cape Cod Technical High School in Harwich and the Medway Department of Public Works each landed $1.32 million, and Hopkinton High School received the same amount. Truro Central School was awarded $866,040.
Housing Projects and a County Jail Round Out the List
Affordable housing developments across Greater Boston picked up a string of resilience grants. Boston’s Mattahunt Elementary School and Community Center received $2.49 million, the largest of the Boston-area awards, while the city’s Heritage Apartments got $1.24 million and the Tobin Community Center received $1.25 million. Boston’s Holtzer Park and West Fenway Apartments, along with the Fairweather Salem affordable housing project in Salem, each received $521,640 grants. Boston’s Lower Mills Apartment received $749,421, and Lafayette Place in Worcester received an identical $521,640 award. The 28-30 Wendell affordable housing project in Cambridge received $600,192, and Leventhal House, run by 2Life Communities, was granted $780,750.
Barnstable County Jail received a $2.17 million community resilience grant, one of the larger single awards outside the school and housing categories. The Josiah Willard Hayden Recreation Center in Lexington received $1.55 million, and Nantucket’s Boys & Girls Club was awarded $765,180. Smaller grants went to the Housing Corporation of Arlington’s Capitol Square project at $218,841, Pond Street Apartments in Boston at $160,929, and the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts’ Sustainability Hub office, which received $71,800. The Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield received $412,000.
Batteries That Last 10 to 20 Hours
The long-duration energy storage category funds technologies designed to store electricity for 10 to 20 hours, a longer stretch than typical grid batteries. Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Charlemont received the single largest award in that category, more than $4.5 million, for a 20-hour sodium-iron chloride battery project. Mystic Place Apartments in Medford received $883,500 for a 10-hour aqueous zinc battery system, an example of the varied battery chemistries the state is backing.
The new projects build on a statewide storage effort that has already passed an earlier deployment benchmark. A Massachusetts law set a target of 1,000 megawatt-hours of energy storage by Dec. 31, 2025; utilities reported 1,621 MWh installed by the end of that year, with another 13,289 MWh in their project pipelines. Those statewide figures include storage beyond the 36 grants announced in this round. The Department of Energy Resources’ storage-target update records the target and reported totals.
Energy and Environmental Affairs officials tied the storage push to a broader shift already underway on the grid. Secretary Rebecca Tepper said battery storage supplied more electricity to the grid in the first eight months of 2026 than in all of 2025, according to the same MassLive report.
Training Grants Target First Responders and Electricians
Not all of the money is going toward hardware. Safety and education grants are funding training for first responders, electricians, and municipal officials, with instruction covering fire codes, permitting, and emergency response. The Boston Fire Department received $314,697 for energy-storage safety training, and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council was awarded $700,460.
Other safety and education awards went to the Solar & Storage Industries Institute alongside Code Red Consultants, which received $800,000, and the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, partnered with BT2 Energy, which received $500,000. Clean Energy Group, working with Slingshot and the Energy Safety Response Group, received $210,000, while the Franklin Regional Council of Governments was awarded a smaller $12,800 grant.
The grants fall under the Advancing Massachusetts Power energy storage grant program, which the state’s Department of Energy Resources administers. Healey framed the grants as part of a broader resilience strategy to keep critical facilities powered during storms and extended outages.
