The Army Corps of Engineers cut two-thirds of the battery storage out of its Lakehurst microgrid job with less than a week left before bids. The spec book issued Aug. 28 asked for three battery units at 500 kilowatts and 1.5 megawatt-hours each, which works out to 4.5 megawatt-hours. The Corps' posted answers to bidder questions now say 500 kilowatts and 500 kilowatt-hours each, 1.5 megawatt-hours in all. A revised microgrid section went out with those answers. If your battery price came off the original table, you priced three times the storage the Corps now wants.
The job is solicitation W912DS26BA032, Construction of Power Generation with Microgrid at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. The Corps puts it at $10 million to $25 million. It is a sealed-bid, firm-fixed-price contract, open to any firm with no set-aside, and HUBZone firms get the usual price-evaluation preference. The work sits on the Lakehurst side of the base, along Hancock Road at Building 678, in Ocean County.
“If your battery price came off the original table, you priced three times the storage the Corps now wants.”
Here is what gets built. Two 500 kW natural-gas generators. The three battery units. A ground-mount solar array on existing asphalt: 300 kW in the base bid, plus a 100 kW option. A new 2,300 kVA transformer off the base's 34.5 kV loop, a 38 kV pad-mounted switch, and a 4,000-amp switchboard with the microgrid controller built into it. The package ties it all into Building 678's existing switchgear. On paper the system has to carry a 2.5-megawatt critical load and run islanded with no end date.
The deadline is the next thing to watch. The solicitation and the SAM.gov record both say sealed paper bids are due at 26 Federal Plaza on Monday, Sept. 28, at 2 p.m. In its posted answers, the Corps says it is moving that to Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 2 p.m. under an Amendment 0004. It says it cannot go later because of fiscal-year-end funding. The same amendment is supposed to swap the Burlington County wage rates for Ocean County's. As of Sept. 24, Amendment 0004 was not posted and only Amendment 0001 was. Plan for Monday until the paper says Wednesday, and acknowledge 0004 on your bid form once it lands.
Four more answers move money. First, the generators now have to be rated and EPA-certified for continuous and prime duty, not just standby. The Corps said no spec change was needed for that, so don't wait for one. Second, the contractor owns the New Jersey air-permit modification, including the application and the fees, and has to give the base six months' notice before the generators come on the installation. On a 720-day job that is a schedule item from day one. Third, the contractor furnishes temporary load banks: one full-size bank per generator and a 1.5-megawatt, 480-volt bank for the batteries. Fourth, the contractor pays for utilities, commissioning gas included, until acceptance.
The controls come with strings attached. Every intelligent electronic device in the microgrid has to be sourced exclusively from the United States, from the circuit board and firmware through final assembly. Remote engineering access is banned outright, and so is hardware that could provide it. The supervisory front end has to run on the Niagara 4 framework the base already uses. On meters, only models on the Air Force's approved list are allowed. The Corps turned down one bidder's request to substitute another. A bidder also asked whether the defense bill's ban on certain battery makers starting in October 2027 applies here. That question has been sent up the chain and has no answer yet.
The answers also name the design's reference equipment, which tells suppliers what they are pricing against. That's Cummins for the generators and Schneider Electric's commercial microgrid controller. For the solar: Mission Solar 550-watt bifacial modules, CPS 100 kW string inverters and SMA string combiners. The Corps says the battery design is not sole-sourced.
Seventeen firms signed in at the Sept. 3 site walk. They ranged from electrical contractors like Wysocki Electric, Imperial Electric and Eastern Construction & Electric to general contractors like Dobco, David Boland and J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, with equipment makers Schneider Electric and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories also on the sheet. If you're a sub chasing trenching, concrete pads, fencing, duct bank or gas work, that sheet is your list of primes.
The fine print cuts both ways. Bids need a 20 percent bid bond, capped at $3 million. The contract runs 720 calendar days from notice to proceed, and liquidated damages run $3,246 a day. A bidder asked for a cap on those damages and has no answer. The solicitation also states that funds are not presently available, so no award happens until the Corps has the money. Some conflicts are still open in the documents. One handhole is 18 inches deep in the answer log but 24 inches on the revised drawing. The light poles are square on the drawings, while the spec says not to install square poles. Two different utilities are named for the gas service. Price the worst case, or get a question in before the deadline.
What to do now: download the full package and the posted answer log from the SAM.gov notice for W912DS26BA032. Re-run your battery and generator numbers against the revised tables, and check SAM daily for Amendment 0004. Bids go in on paper at the New York District office in Manhattan, so leave time for building security.