A Boulder County property owner recently received an unusual offer: $15,000 a year to host a commercial battery system on part of their land, according to a proposed lease from Denver-based Pivot Energy reviewed by Boulder Reporting Lab.
There was a catch. The initial lease would last 20 years, and the developer could extend it for another two decades.
The property owner declined. The payment, the owner decided, was not worth surrendering control of the land for potentially 40 years. The owner asked not to be named to protect their privacy.
The offer may not be an isolated one. Pivot Energy said it is exploring three potential battery projects in Boulder County, all in the early stages of development. More offers could follow. A 2024 state law requires Xcel Energy to acquire distributed generation paired with battery storage, creating demand for land with access to key points on its distribution grid.
Boulder County is one focus of the search. Xcel identified 23 feeders, or distribution lines that carry electricity from substations to customers, on the Boulder-area grid where batteries could potentially connect, according to its request for proposals.
The search is bringing a new kind of energy development to private land in Boulder County. The battery projects are intended to support the transition to clean energy, and developers are looking for properties with enough open space and access to parts of Xcel’s distribution system where the systems would be most useful.
For landowners, the offers raise questions about committing property for decades, accepting payments that may not reflect the property’s full value and signing agreements that could complicate a future sale. Large lithium-ion batteries also pose a fire risk.
Boulder residents may already be familiar with home batteries, which the city recently added to its solar sales tax rebate program. But the systems developers are proposing are considerably larger, with individual units roughly the size of a shipping container.
Known as battery energy storage systems, or BESS, they store electricity drawn from the grid during periods of low demand or generated by sources such as solar panels. That electricity can be returned to the grid when demand rises or a particular section of the system is strained.
“It’s more like a traditional utility resource, but instead of [Xcel] owning it, they’re allowing a large project to connect to the grid and sell that power back to them,” said Carolyn Elam, the City of Boulder’s senior sustainability manager.
Xcel spokesperson Michelle Aguayo said the batteries are intended to ease pressure on parts of the utility’s distribution system. Unlike a power plant serving the wider grid, each battery installation would generally respond to needs in a particular area. By supplying electricity during periods of high demand, the batteries could improve overall grid performance. The solicitation is Xcel’s first attempt to acquire commercial batteries at scale.
Xcel works with the companies that operate the batteries but has no relationship with the landowners who host them, Aguayo said.
“Developers are responsible for identifying and securing sites for their projects, which may include leasing land from private property owners,” she said. “Any outreach residents receive regarding potential leases is coming from those developers, not Xcel Energy.”
Even a successful lease would not guarantee that a battery system would be built. Projects selected by Xcel must receive approval from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
In unincorporated Boulder County, projects would require a special-use review and public hearings before the Planning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners. The county had received a few inquiries about battery systems of this size, but none had advanced beyond general questions, and no applications had been submitted as of July 2026, spokesperson Rick Hackett said.
High land costs may make projects difficult within Boulder city limits, Elam said, and she knew of no completed leases with landowners. The city is considering whether to seek a developer to install batteries on city-owned property.
Why Colorado wants distributed batteries
Senate Bill 24-207, signed into law in 2024, requires investor-owned utilities with more than 500,000 customers to acquire at least 50 megawatts of dispatchable distributed generation paired with energy storage by June 1, 2026. They must acquire another 50 megawatts between Jan. 1 and June 1, 2027.
Xcel issued its request for proposals in June 2026 in response to the law. Bids are due Sept. 3, and the utility expects to execute contracts in November. A supplemental solicitation opened in July.
The projects must connect directly to the utility’s distribution network, rather than operate behind an individual customer’s electric meter.
“For those larger batteries, they really serve as an important grid asset to improve reliability and help ensure that we are able to reduce outages across the grid,” said Keith Hay, managing director of policy at the Colorado Energy Office.
The law’s storage provisions will also generate projects for Black Hills Energy, Colorado’s other investor-owned electric utility, Hay said.
Hay expects the requirement to produce 130 megawatts of commercial battery capacity across the state, roughly equivalent to the maximum output of a small power plant.
Batteries can be especially useful on hot summer afternoons and evenings, when electricity demand peaks. Utilities have traditionally met those spikes with fossil-fuel “peaker” plants, usually powered by natural gas. Distributed batteries could offer a less expensive alternative, said Todd Olinsky-Paul, a senior project director at Clean Energy Group, a national nonprofit research and advocacy organization.
“The biggest market for distributed batteries is as a replacement for some of that peaker plant input,” he said.
What’s in a 40-year battery lease?
The proposed lease reviewed by Boulder Reporting Lab would give the developer extensive control over the property. The landowner would receive about $2,500 a year while the company worked to bring the battery system online. The rent would then rise to $15,000 a year, with annual increases.
The landowner could not use the leased area for farming, storage or other activities or enter it without written permission. The company would have year-round access for workers, vehicles and equipment.
The owner would also waive the right to bring certain nuisance complaints. Any electricity stored by the project would belong to the company, which would be required to maintain insurance throughout the lease.
Some restrictions are intended to protect the equipment and keep people a safe distance away, Olinsky-Paul said.
“You don’t want people to be too close to it in case something happens,” he said. “You don’t want people messing with it.”
Most large systems use lithium-ion batteries similar to those in phones and laptops, but on a much larger scale. They are relatively light and inexpensive, but damaged or overheated units can catch fire, said Michael Toney, a professor in CU Boulder’s Materials Science and Engineering Program.
Other battery technologies carry less fire risk. These include aqueous systems, which use water-based electrolytes. But they remain more expensive and are not yet available at the same scale, Toney said.
In January 2025, an energy storage facility in Moss Landing, California, caught fire, burning an estimated 55% to 80% of the site’s lithium-ion batteries over several days. The long-term health and ecological effects remain unknown.
“I’d say it’s not the best technology,” Toney said. “But at least right now, it’s by far the cheapest, and that seems to overwhelm any other kinds of consideration.”
Olinsky-Paul said anyone considering a battery lease should have an attorney review it.
Landowners should find out who would maintain the system, what the insurance would cover and who would remove the batteries when the lease ends, Olinsky-Paul said. They should also ask what would happen if the developer went out of business before then.
“What you don’t want is to get stuck with a battery after 15 years and the company’s moved on or doesn’t exist any longer,” Olinsky-Paul said.
Have you received an offer to lease your land for battery storage? We’d like to hear from you. Contact Por Jaijongkit at por@boulderreportinglab.org or, for a more secure conversation, on Signal at porbrl.11.
